How to pilot your dragon
by AJ-Writer
Summary: Inspired by How to Train your Dragon 2015, in a more galactic scale, and carry some element from Mass Effect and other titles. But Story will focus mainly on Hiccup. R&R.
1. Chapter 1: Prologue

My head went a little bit crazier than usual, and to make myself sane a little bit… I had to do this. Inspired by the story How to Train Your Dragon 2015. Albeit in a more galactic scale.

Took some elements from Mass Effect, Macross Frontier, and Starcraft. Use the alien race from Mass Effect.

Hiccup: Human : Engineer

Astrid: Human : Soldier

Stoick: Human : Commando

Gobber: Krogan : Battlemaster-Warlord

Snotlout: Turian : Agent

Tuffnut, Ruffnut: Quarian twins : Sentinels

Fishlegs: Krogan : Berserker

Prologue:

This is the flagship of the flotilla colony, a kilometer long heavy class dreadnought: the Hairy Hooligan, or just the Hooligan. Right now, we're stationed in the Anubis nebula, orbiting the planet, Berk. It is 12 light years north from the Dark Space and just a few collapsed star systems too close from the core of the known galaxy. Berk is the only habitable planet in the middle of this nebula, encircled by a ring of asteroid, and surrounded by lots and lots of space debris and a couple of unstable stars.

The Flotilla, in a word, sturdy. We're talking about a fleet of military class dreadnoughts carrying bigger guns led by an even bigger dreadnought with the biggest gun. We've been here for 7 generations orbiting the planet, and every colony ship is brand new. We have Malls, we have Movies, and we even have farms and poultries and a charming view of the only Sun that won't go Nova for the next 30 million years.

The only problem is the space turbulence.

Other colony fleets have meteor shower, space pirates, slaver raids…

We have…

One of the dreadnought's thrusters suddenly exploded, followed by a large red alien frigate which is not unlike a living creature with wings suddenly appearing out of nowhere as it literally roared.

Dragons.

A fleet of hive minded super advanced synthetic/organic/or a-mixture-of-both sentient warships of alien origin. They reside in the unexplored region referred to as dark space, the empty, starless space between galaxies. Scientist theorized they hibernate there, dormant for thousands of years, before for some reason… they suddenly just came at us and made our live more colorful. Their origins are completely unknown. We called these sentient warships "Dragons" because… well…

The red frigate flapped its wings while its entire body changed direction midair. Energy charging on its head before it fired a stream of red hot beam, blocked by the Battlecruiser's barely holding kinetic barrier. Not unlike a mythical dragon's breath.

Uncanny resemblance, no?

Meanwhile, in the space, a couple more of the red Dragons appeared, followed by a swarm of smaller and somewhat pathetic looking Dragons. That being said though, they literally blanketed the whole space, blotting out the Sun. The swarm was soon followed by another fleet of different classes of larger dragons with myriad shape, color and size.

In every corner of the ship, sirens blaring, inside, soldiers running across the alleyway. Outside, the AA batteries of every ship begin roaring, sending projectiles and missiles at the dragons. One dragon dodged the wrong way and had a missile locked in. The blast hit its kinetic barrier, shattering it, and knocked it off course but otherwise unharmed… though a salvo of the AA batteries changed that soon.

Most people would probably leave. But not us. We're Marauders. A special paramilitary branch in Citadel Council Dark Space Voyage program whose task is to venture into inhospitable worlds and made it hospitable. That being said… we all have stubbornness issue.

Inside the Hooligan, in the large armory, one particularly young and skinny soldier rushed through the crowds of tougher and more muscle bound (macho) soldiers.

"Hiccup! What are you doing here?"

"Get back inside!"

"Back inside!"

"Sorry… I… I just need to get to the workshop okay!"

Yep. That's me. I'm John'Hiccup' Horrendous Haddock III. An overworked, highly underrated Engineer. Just then, an explosion occurred and the ship's VI starts screaming warnings:

"Warning! Warning! Kinetic barrier breached. Ship's integrity compromised."

Just then, I saw the walls of the armory start burning red hot. Something is about to come through.

"M-Boots up and secure yourself!" a loud voice echoed across the armory. In a disciplined manner, everyone reached for their shoes and pressed a button. The shoes glowed as their magnetized feet now stick to the floor.

Just then, the red hot wall finally exploded and a red dragon's elongated head burst out of the molten wall, outside, its large claws, still can't get in, starts banging on the ship's exterior hull, trying to widen the hole. It's just a small hole on the wall, but in the middle of space, a hole that small already begin sucking the air on the room, pulling everything out. A few soldiers who were unfortunate enough were sucked into the void.

I had to hold on to the ground, even with magnetic boots on. I took hold on a crane but finally my feet went off the ground. I would've got spaced if a strong hand didn't grab hold of mine.

"Hiccup! What is he doing…What are you doing here! Get back inside!" The strong hand belongs to a middle aged man with equally strong voice and a stronger attitude. A red bearded man with features hardened by experience.

That's Commander Stoick "the Vast" Sheppard. Effectively the commander of the entire flotilla. They say he brought down a dragon with a hand grenade when he was 12. Do I believe it?

Stoick took a bazooka and shoot it right on the red dragon's opened mouth, causing an explosion that blow a hole on its carapace, forcing it to back out. Just then, the automated repair system kicks in and the breached hull closed in on itself in no time.

Yes I do.

"What have we got?" Stoick roared over the sirens as he walked towards what appears to be a powersuit.

"Scanners indicate Gronckles, Nadders, hordes of Terrors, and just now, some Nightmares too. The usual.

"Any sign of Night Furies?"

"None so far."

"Good." Stoick climb on his power suit and put it on. A few buttons pressed and the suit powering up and went online, along with another battalion of such soldiers in their respective power suits. Anyone would notice that Stoick's power suit seems bigger, heavily armed, with the black and white design and the skull paintjob, coupled with a few decorations of what looked like Dragon remains melded to the armor.

"Mobilize the fighters; get them to engage the smaller ones. And get ready to open the hull hatches, let's bring the pain."

A large elevator lifted the entire squad of troopers, lead by Stoick, and brought them up to the surface of the ship. The magnetized feet of the power suit latched them to the Hooligan's outer hull. Each carrying a pair of oversized and obviously overpowered machine guns that won't be out of place on Tank turrets-I mean the main gun turret, they spread across the ship's surface.

"FIRE AT WILL!" Stoick roared as the Suit squad began firing their 20 mm Armor Piercing, rocket propelled explosive rounds.

Fighting against a fleet of Alien Living Warships in a macho parley (wearing power suit or not) atop the surface of a dreadnought in the middle of space.

Sound insane? Cool, but insane?

Not for us. We've learned that it's more effective to fight these Aliens this way. Turrets are just way too inflexible. A stream of ion laser strike suddenly took out 2 suit units at once. The explosion didn't even scratch the Hooligan though. See just how sturdy we are?

* * *

**The forge…**

"Hiccup! So glad you can join us. I thought they would've picked you off somewhere." A large hunchbacked scaly alien with an oversized large hump was packing bullets into cases.

"No, me? Come on… I'm way too much for these guys. They wouldn't know what to do with all this… manliness." I showed him my not so impressive muscles… which pretty much non-existent.

"Maybe toothpicks? Who knows what these Dragons need right?" The Krogan with the attitude and interchangeable prosthetic wrench for a left arm is Gobber the Wrench. My father's second in command, arms expert, family friend, and the guy who took care of me since I was little… well… littler.

"Oh swell… at least we know one thing that they need." I looked through the screens and saw swarms of the small Dragons, the Terrible Terrors are flying allover one of the Dreadnought in the flotilla's energy reactor. Dozens latched on to it and began draining electricity.

That's right. These dragons don't attack us without reason. Every time there's a raid they're going for our power cores. Logical, even for us. I mean, sentient or not… they're practically machines. And logic dictates machines need energy as food.

So what's the deal here? Some of you might be thinking about that.

Well… here's an example on the field. One of the Dreadnought's, latched by too many Terrors, and its defensive turrets went down (another reason why we have suit units fighting on the surface of the ship). It was soon latched by other even larger dragons, one after another. It began to go down as its lights went out, overweight and out of power.

"Somebody get those Dragons off that ship! It's going down!" Stoick roared over the com of his suit. Even on the field, he's still in charge of the entire flotilla. The other Dreadnoughts and starfighters began concentrating fire on the infested ship. The dragons finally left, but the ship was heavily damaged and was left a floating hunk of metal, completely offline and off the combat.

See here, in space, energy is everything. It operates the machines that keep everyone in the Flotilla alive. The machine which is responsible for our recycled food, our air, our heat… pretty much everything is run with energy. Without energy, we'll all die. Of course since we're talking about energy we get from the sun, we have virtually unlimited stock, plenty enough for everyone. Problem is that these Dragons took more than what we could gather and their methods of asking are violent at best, destructive at worst. They consume within seconds what we took months to gather. Of course the biggest reason is simply because we're Marauders. We're a bunch mean motherfxxxxr. It's a matter of principles. Simple as that.

As I load the bullets into cases, I noticed on the screen, the battle on the surface is getting even more intense in the earnest. The guns on those suit teams had been blaring nonstop, shooting god-knows how many hundreds of bullets and missiles taking down one dragon after another. Just then, a beeping sound can be heard.

Gobber nodded and shoves a pack of Bullet magazine into a backpack. "Reload 9, 20, and 10! Go!"

A bunch of teenagers, prolly my age don their smaller space suit and start rushing out of the airlock, carrying the bullet cases on their backpack right out of the open battlefield. I watched with excitement on the screen and one by one I can see them.

The Krogan carrying the bullet case, muttering RPG stuff is Fishleg. A literal (mis)translation of his Krogan name into human tongue by the VI resulted in that rather peculiar calling. Somehow the name stuck and he has to put up with it. Has an unnatural berserker issues but took a great interest in human games, specifically RPGs. This resulted in him spouting things in RPG sense. An oddity among the Krogan because he's quite clear headed.

The Turian holding a bazooka defending Fishleg while shouting a series of censored profanity is Snotlout. Again, a result of VI name translation gone horribly wrong. The guy has the tougher-guy-than-thou-hence-I-bully-thee attitude and a serious case of male supremacist. Not exactly convincing though.

The Quarian twins is Tuffnut (male) and Ruffnut (female) Vas Thorston are still arguing whose turn is it to blast the Dragons away. A mishap with their enviro-suit once caused an abundant amount of adrenaline to be administered to their veins. They described the experience as an eye opener and had an adrenaline pumper modified into their suits. The Adrenaline junkie twins were still at it even when a dragon snatched the guy they're supposed to reload.

And finally there's Astrid… who just finished reloading a suit-without escort-and was on her way back when the recently reloaded suit got shot seconds immediately after she left. Oh… she's one seriously hot babe… I sighed, longing evident in my eyes.

And damn… the thing about us, even the job as menial as reloading the soldiers on the field are just that much cooler. Way cooler than mine. I was about to join the fray when Gobber's wrench arm took me by the waist.

"Oh no you don't. You're not going out there."

"Please, I need to make my mark!"

"You've made plenty of marks kid. All in the wrong places."

"2 minutes! Just give me 2 minutes, and I'll go out and shoot down a dragon! Please, my life would've gone infinitely better! I might even get a date!"

"You can barely shoot a handgun, you can't ride a Suit without crashing, you can't even carry one of these!" Gobber had just pointed out on a case of bullets when one of the reloader boys took two of them easily and rush off again. Someone out there is in the need for a reload.

"Okay. You're right! I can't do those things. But I've made this to help me." I tapped a metal briefcase gently and all the sudden it spring out and a cybernetic metal gauntlet shot out, knocking an Asari commando out cold. "Oops."

Gobber sighed in irritation as he walked over to my nervous self, "See, now this right here, is what I'm talkin' about."

"It-It was just a mild calibration issue," I defended, "I can fix that. In time!"

"Hiccup," Gobber stated as he raised his hands, "If you ever want to get out there, fighting dragons," and then traced his hands around me, "You need to stop all this."

The two were quiet for a moment, as I was absorbing this information, until finally, "You just pointed to all of me."

"Yes," Gobber answered as he gently poked me in the chest, "That's it! Just stop being all of you."

I seriously had no idea what he meant, until I mockingly went, "Oh. Ohhhh."

"Ohhhh," Gobber shot right back at me.

"You sir are playing dangerous games keeping this kind of soldier here! There will be consequences!" I strain my voice, just to make a point.

"I'll take my chances." The Krogan, unmoved nor fazed simply snickered before he went back to his serious attitude and threw a couple of empty ammo cases. "Reload, now!"

"Grmbl…" I groaned as I carry belts and belts of ammo and packed them up.

Someday I'll go out there and prove I can kill a dragon. Dragon Slayer is the coolest job amongst the list of coolest jobs ever among the Marauders. Those guys in power suit that fought the Dragons head on? That's what I'm talking about. Being a Dragon Slayer means you're in a whole lot of different dimension with normal soldiers.

There are plenty of types of Dragons out there; and destroying just one will earn me something. Except the Terrible terrors, which are way too easy. They're the smallest class of dragons, and weak starfighters… some of them are even the size of drones. But there's nothing more satisfying than when you shoot down at least a thousand of these. The frigate class blue dragon is called the Deadly Nadder. In a word? Versatile. It got variable output Ion Cannons on its frontal hull and a whole set of missiles for scales. Bringing one down would definitely get me at least seen differently. A Gronckle is huge and tough through and through tank Dragon. A medium sized cruiser class dragon, but definitely the bulkiest and largest of all dragons. Weirdly, it uses multiple huge rotors for mobility. Bringing one down will definitely get me a date. The Hideous Zippleback is also a cruiser class with two frontal bridges (which means two heads) with a crapload amount of guns and weapons, and whole lotta alien firepower. Two heads, twice the promotion. And then there's the Monstrous Nightmare.

Just then, the Hooligan suddenly shook. A red Monstrous Nightmare just crashed into the hull again. That same Red cruiser Dragon Stoick shot. The shock caused some of the Dragon Slayer team on the surface fell off and spaced. Stoick gritted his teeth in anger at further loss of his men.

The Monstrous Nightmare is a generally red, relatively small Cruiser class Dragon which has this nasty habit of crashing into things before setting everything, including itself, on fire. It's still not fully understood how on earth the Dragon can keep itself ablaze in space where there are no oxygen to lit the flame. But it's always one heck of a conflagration. Only the best Slayer went after these guys.

The blazing Nightmare roared as its forward arms, which double as its wings start hammering at the Battlecruiser again, its claws start tearing a fresh new hole on the Hooligan.

"Get those spaced guys back to the surface! I'll deal with this." Stoick gripped his controller tight and press a few buttons. A huge chainsaw blade slid out from the lower parts of the rifles, and start buzzing loudly. Its buzzing edges turn bright red hot. Stoick fearlessly drove his Suit and tackle the blazing alien machine. The blades punctured the Dragon's chest area several times. Stoick even unload a couple shots while his blade is sawing its way through the sentient cruiser's tough plating for more damage. The Nightmare sounding its displeasure and began charging its breath, preparing to fire its particle nuclear fission cannon point blank, knowing it'll hurt Stoick more than it'll hurt it. At the last second, Stoick shoved the head away, pushing it upward. The dragon's cannon exploded in a stream of bright red hot beam which is completely off the mark.

Yep. Definitely only the best Slayer can go toe to toe with the Nightmare. Even ones with power suits large enough to go toe to toe brawl with these sentient alien cruisers. But the best prize… the big bad one… is the one dragon no one has ever gaze eyes upon.

A siren blaring as the VI gave another warning sign: "Warning! Singularity anomaly detected. Lightning storm imminent."

"Lightning storm in the middle of the space?" Stoick's eyes widened, realizing what it meant. Apparently, his opponent realized an even greater danger than itself had also arrived. Knowing that, it moved away from Stoick and throttle as far away as it could. Stoick saw a glimpse… a black hole appearing on the space surrounded with electricity. "GET DOWN!"

Suddenly a fast purple beam projectile shot out of the black hole, shattered the kinetic barrier of a dreadnought and punched a big hole on one of its boosters, effectively ripping it to two. Following, a black shape of an incredibly fast but small frigate class Dragon fly out of the black hole, went past the damaged ship, and right into another black hole which conveniently appear just right in front of it. All this, in a span of a few seconds.

THAT, was a Night Fury. A black, small, frigate class dragon that can warp jump from one black hole to another and fly at a near constant FTL speed. No one has ever caught a glimpse of it and all our radars gone haywire every time it appears. The only indication of the attack is the black hole anomaly, and the said lightning storm in the space. Other than this, it never steals energy (thank God for that), never show itself and…

Within a window of 3 seconds, another blackhole appeared and the Night Fury burst out, shot one of the dreadnought's larger turrets to oblivion and then warp jump again into another blackhole.

…never misses.

No one has ever brought down that particular Dragon. So I'm gonna be the first.

"Oh well, it looks pretty terrible." Gobber had replaced his prosthetic wrench with a large weapon arm composed of a fully automatic cannon and a missile launcher. "They need me out there. So Hiccup, man the station and remember. Stay. Put. Right. There. You know what I mean."

I nodded sarcastically. "Yeah, yeah."

The Krogan battlemaster put on his space power suit and jumped out of the airlock, roaring as it shoot bullets and missiles to a horde of Terrors.

"I'll never gonna get a girl like this…" Just then, the ship shook again and Hiccup saw that same Night Fury had just scored another shot. "Holy… alright. That's it. Enough waiting!"

And with that in mind, I left my post and brought my case. I stop right in front of the airlock. "Now let's see if this thing works." I drop the case on the floor and then the whole contraption it unravel. I placed my feet on the pads and placed my hands on the handle. Lifting the whole thing, the program activated on its own and began to unravel, covering my feet, my arms, and some part of my chest and finally, a helmet formed on my head. It's still half complete, and some of my body parts are still wide exposed… but the world's first collapsible portable power armor is here.

"Oi! Hiccup! What are you doing?" One of the soldiers noticed me and yelled.

"I'll be right back!" And with that, I jumped out of the airlock.

As soon as I'm out in open space, the M-boots on my suit activated and I stuck on the surface of the ship. I looked around the battlefield and saw one after another the dragons are being shot down. That's right. We're not exactly losing. We got big guns, we got the guys, we got the ships… the only thing we don't have… crew. The Dragons came in every month, we shoot down like… hundreds of them… and they never seem to run out of crew. Worse… in the last few months their attacks have been intensifying.

But since things going pretty nice… somewhat… I think I'm allowed at least this. I dropped the package in my hand and it unravel into a rocket launcher, one that I have tinkered with. I shoulder it over and look through the targeting scope. For months, I've been doing some research on the Night Fury's attack pattern. It never aims at energy cores. It always directed its targets on objects of offensive capability, particularly ones that prove to be problematic to the swarm like turrets or suits that killed too much dragon. This Night Fury is designed to take out strategic targets, and it's really is the best at what it does. Throughout this battle two turrets have been giving the invading party too much trouble. The first one was already blasted out… the other is just in front of me. 9 out of 10, it'll hit here next.

"Not tonight. Tonight, I'm taking you down…" My eyes switched from the radar to the targeting scope time and again. And then… "Come on… give me something to shoot, give me something to shoot, give me something to sh-"

_"Singularity Anomaly detected. Lightning Storm imminent." _

"There!" a black hole appeared and a purple beam burst out, taking out the turret. At almost the same time, a blur appeared out of the black hole and I fired the bazooka, the recoil knocked me off my feet by the way. Midair, the customized missile split into smaller missiles, each had an eerie blue glow.

Whatever creature the missiles had locked on to was shocked and tried to run, the missiles hit it full. Multiple blue EMP rinse light the space and then, when the explosion is over, I saw the silhouette of the Dragon made atmospheric re-entry by way of planetfall towards Berk's asteroid ring.

"Yes… YES! I DID IT! YEAH! I DID IT! Did anybody see that!"

Just then I heard clanking sound from my back… and saw a Monstrous Nightmare looking straight at me, angry, as always.

"Anybody except you, please."

And I start running and screaming while the Nightmare starts spitting firebeams and the lot at me.

At the distance, Stoick had just lop off a nadder's head point blank when he saw a familiar figure screaming bloody murder. He sighed in exasperation. "KEEP THEM AWAY FROM COM TOWER!"

"Yes sir!"

"AAAAAAAAAAHHH!" I ran and hide behind the first object I found. Just in time as the stream of fire beam burst out from my back and severely burning whatever object I took cover with. As I turned around, a mechanical growl came from my back. The giant alien warship was staring at me in the face. A small scar can be seen on its upper carapace.

"I can't believe this… you're that mad at the commander?"

The Nightmare might have wanted to answer with a roar and a fireblast, if a missile didn't hit it in the face first. I looked and saw a black and white powersuit with a smoking barrel.

The dragon reels from the impact, and attempts to recover, shrieking madly. Leaping down from the ledge he was on, the commander furiously unload everything he has in his suit into the Nightmare. The Nightmare was furious, recognizing its nemesis. But eventually, it sense no other alternative and finally gives up its prey and flies away with an angry roar. The thing is, as it lifted off, its tail knocked the tower. The same com tower that I had use to take cover.

The com tower, now burning from top to bottom, collapses and smash through a part of the Hooligan.

Oops.

A clanking stomp sounded on my com and I turned around to see the commander opening the filter of his helmet, allowing me to see his angry and grim face. I am so screwed.

Oh… and there's one last detail…

"Sorry… Dad." Yes, he's my father.

"Hiccup, I want you in my office in half an hour."

"Yes sir."

* * *

**Half an hour later, Captain's quarter**…

"WHAT PART OF STAY INSIDE THAT YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND, HICCUP!"

If an Alien was asked if the commander's voice can be heard outside the ship, they would probably say yes. That particular Alien being Gobber, who winced as he eavesdropped just behind the door.

"But I hit a Night Fury! It's not like the other times, maybe we can get a search party…"

"Stop! Just stop. Son, can you not see I have bigger problems? We've been orbiting the planet for 7 generations… that's 300 years. We just set a record of being the longest Marauder never to pacify a planet! The Council have been hounding my door, asking why, after 3 centuries of us bleeding them dry of resources, we still can't establish even one colony on Berk! Should I tell them one of the many reasons, is that because every time my son steps outside, disaster falls? Why can't you follow the simplest orders?" Hiccup could tell his father was frustrated. The boy shuffled nervously while hanging his head, understanding their plight.

That's right. For 300 years, the Flotilla Hooligan has been orbiting the planet Berk. Their goal was ultimately the colonization of the said planet, but they've never succeeded. In 7 generations, the colony never survives any longer than a week. Thanks in no small part, to the Dragon's constant harassment. The Dragons had apparently established a foothold of their own, somewhere in the planet. But for some reason, the fleet has never been able to pinpoint the exact location, preventing any orbital bombardment.

"Well, it's just who I am, Dad; When I see a dragon, I have to just… kill it, you know?"

Stoick sighed heavily, his palm on his forehead. "Son, you're… many things, but a dragon-slayer isn't one of them. I-" whatever it was Stoick wished to say never get finished because the com beeps. "What?"

Came Spitelout's voice. Stoick's third in command. "The com tower has been replaced… there's a call from the Council… sir."

"Can't you pick it up for me? I'm in no mood for more nagging…"

"Sir…"

"Alright!" He swung his arms exasperatedly. "On them in 5." He pressed another button, and the door slid open. Gobber stumbled in. "If you weren't my friend, eavesdropping could you get you shot."

"I don't have to try really." Gobber chuckled.

"Get him back to his room. I have his mess to clean up."

"Yes… sir." Resigned to his fate as the generation latest model for a jarhead, Hiccup trudge back with Gobber on his back.

My bunkmates weren't particularly encouraging either. When I went in, all I got were cynical remarks and laughter.

"Nice going there."

"Seriously, I have never seen anyone screw up that badly before. Hah!" Snotlout had his head smacked lightly on the back by Gobber.

Hiccup swallowed everything in. As he made his way to his room, he could only spill everything to the only person who will listen… in a way.

"Gobber, I really shot down a Night Fury."

"Of course you do." The krogan rolled his eyes, a portion of him not believing the boy's story.

"He never listens."

"Runs in the family."

"And every time he does, it's always with this… disappointed scowl on his face." Hiccup finally spilt all his frustration, ranting on with a mock copy of his father's tone. "Excuse me Bartender, I think you brought me the wrong offspring! I ordered an extra-large boy with beefy arms. With a cocktail of Extra guts and glory. This here, this is a talking toothpick!"

Gobber sighed. "Now see here, you're getting this all wrong. It's not what you look like in the outside. It's what inside you that he couldn't stand."

A seriously wrong way to brighten a downed teenager. But a good try. Hiccup smirked and reply with his trademark dry humor. "Thank you for summing that up."

Gobber clearly realized his pep talk didn't exactly hit the mark. So he finally simply added. "Look what I'm tryin to say is… not all of us are meant to be warriors. Stop trying so hard to be something you're not."

"I'm just trying to be one of you guys." And with that, Hiccup close the door to his bunk, leaving Gobber, who, again, grieving for being at lost on what to say.

* * *

If this story is well received… I'll post the next chapter.

* * *

M-Boots: Stand for Magnetic Boots. Originally, it's more often to be used by engineers for fixing the extremities of a ship. However, in combat against dragons, the Marauders found it is more efficient to fight the dragons outside, on the surface of the starship. This is to better prevent the Dragons from breaking into the interior of the ship, where they can cause even greater havoc. With the Dragon's habit of latching unto ships, draining electricity, turrets can be rendered inactive once the power core has been drained. Hence, the M-Boots were applied to the padding of the Power Suit and soon it was also mass produced and became a staple for every Marauder on the Hooligan fleet.

Dragon Slayer: The power suit GrAMM (Gyro Aligned Mobile Marauder) was built using YMIR mech chasis. The Marauders found the hard way that using a purely droid army against the Dragons is like inviting them to an all you can eat buffet. And so, the Ymir was redesigned to allow manual control. The Droid became power armor with shield and armor, but 60% of its weight was bear by the driver, necessitating a fairly strong pilot. The resulting power suit however was even larger than the droid itself. The Dragon Slayer was designed to utilize heavy weaponry that would sometimes necessitate non human to utilize. That being said, the Power suit utilizes not the more common heat sink system commonly found on infantry weapon. Instead, it utilizes the traditional ammo reload system with customized ammo. Sometimes, the suits were lined with some Eezo, reducing its weight significantly. But this practice is too expensive as it requires the installment of a portable zero element drive, and it's too expensive for mass production.


	2. Chapter 2: Meet the Night Fury

AN: Getting a nice response so far, and I like how this story going. So I will continue. As you guys might have guessed, the dragons here are much-much larger than in the movie.

* * *

"I need more men, Alvin. I've been asking you that for ages! Heck for generations that all we've been asking!"

"_And I tell you, we don't have it. Stoick, do you have any idea how expensive the soldiers you have in your disposal? How many guys out there want to join the Marauders, knowing the sort of mess you guys get yourselves into? I've been telling you, you can just bomb blast the entire rock!"_

"Habitable planet doesn't grow on trees!" the General smashed the table in anger.

"_Goddammit, Stoick! Need I remind you why we sent the Marauders there in the first place? Here let me show you again." _Next to Alvin's form, a holographic image of Berk appeared. The image focus and magnify a portion of the Planet's surface. Underneath the surface, blue objects can be seen covering most of the crust' layers. _"See this? This is why we sent you there. The planet has the richest Element Zero deposits, anywhere this side of a galaxy."_

"If only you stupid corporate bureaucrats give me what I need instead of telling what to do…" Stoick mumble under his breath.

"_Is that sarcasm?"_ Alvin apparently heard Stoick incoherent mumble. The commander's silent response seem to confirm this and Alvin's voice blared from the com. _"If I were you commander you keep your sarcasm to yourself and your monkey friends. You don't do that to me. ESPECIALLY me. Are we clear?"_

"Yes sir." Stoick grudgingly complies.

"_Good. Now you better get me some result so I can report to the council." _And with that, the com went out. And so does Stoick's temper. He began trashing everything he can get his hands on, the walls, the paperwork, the tables, etc. When he finally calmed down, Gobber went in.

"I trust our request for reinforcement has been, once again, denied."

"Stupid corporate idiots." The commander was still half pissed. But after a while, he finally begins to calm down.

Gobber took this chance to speak. "Your men are waiting outside."

"Ok."

* * *

Chapter 2: Meet the Night Fury

Later that evening, Stoick gathered all his lieutenants and began their discussion with his speech. "Every one of you has been fighting for your survival. I just had an ultimatum from the council. Either we clean this place up, or they will pull the plug and we all lose our job. So either we finish them or they'll finish us!" Stoick nodded to Spitelout, and the Turian put a display of the Planet Berk.

"The only way we'll be rid of them is that if we find the nest and destroy it, the dragons will leave and I'm damn sure they'll find another home! One more orbital drop. We'll scour the planet, and bomb blast their nest to Kingdom come to the point they'll never come back within a thousand light years to this planet!"

"Those cruisers who went down there never come back." One of the Marauders pointed out.

"We're Marauders. It's an occupational hazard. Now who's with me?"

The marauders' responses in the room initially appear less than optimistic, some are even fearful. "Count me out." "Today's no good for me." "I have to tune up my rifle." Even Spitelout appear skeptic.

Stoick sighed. But he knew one magic command that will change this pessimistic atmosphere in one stroke. "All right. Those who stay… will look after Hiccup."

In less than a second everyone responded enthusiastically. "To the ships!" "I'm with you Stoick!"

Stoick sighed heavily with mixed feelings. Pleased that he managed to inspire the men. Perplexed to think the threat of his son's company is even bigger menace than the dragon itself. And he knew they were right. "That's more like it."

When most of the crew had left, Gobber decided to voice his opinion. "Not that I supported Alvin's plan but… why can't we just… you know… bomb blast several select strategic spot on the planet?"

"Because you know damn well enough, colonization is the only way we can survive in this system. It took a lot of lives of the forerunners to set up some form of foothold in this planet. If we just bomb blast everything to Stone Age, we'll never make it on a trip home. Global expansion and mining may well be the only reason we're here, but eventually when everything is said and done, we still need a place to set foot on and call home."

Satisfied with his answer, Gobber smiled and nodded in approval. "Okay. Well, I'll go pack my undies." Gobber got up as he finished his ryncol (Krogan Beverage-very strong).

Stoick chuckled. But he knew every time the Krogan Battlemaster make jokes about his undies, it means he had a bad feeling about a particular decision of his. Though he knew more than anyone that Gobber will follow his every command even to the depths of Hell. But not this time though. "Can the jokes, old friend. You're not coming. I need you to stay and train some new recruits. Many people gonna get themselves killed and we need replacements since the council doesn't seem interested on giving us any."

Gobber nodded. Hereditary succession has been the only way for them to replace their dead. Their ranks are also hereditary unless otherwise stated.

That being said, Hiccup was supposedly next in line for the rank of Commander. And since Hiccup is just being… Hiccup… the future prospect is quite grim for the Marauders. To explain this particular issue, Gobber followed. "Perfect. And, while I'm busy, Hiccup can cover the fort. Gunpowder, Armor piercing rounds, explosives… lots of time to himself. What could possibly go wrong?"

"What am I going to do with him, Gobber?" Stoick fell down to his seat, completely at loss on what should he do regarding his eccentric son.

"Put him in training." The Krogan replied nonchalantly.

"No, I'm serious." Put Hiccup in Dragon-Slayer program? Yeah right.

"So am I." One look at Gobber and Stoick realized he was being serious.

"He'd be killed before the first dragon is out of its cell."

"You don't know that."

"I do, actually."

"No, you don't."

"No, I do."

"No, you don't."

Stoick decided to cut the argument. "Listen, you know what he's like. From the time he could crawl, he's been... different. He doesn't listen. He NEVER listens!"

"Like I said, runs in the family." Gobber mumbled to himself, while Stoick, obviously, didn't catch it and went on with his rant.

"…He has the attention span of a sparrow. I take him to a shooting range and he goes hunting for Tresher Maw!"

"Well, we Krogans threw our younglings to a varren's nest and even bring along a Tresher maw. I heard one of your ancestor killed one on foot."

"When I was a boy…"

"Oh Ancestral Spirits, Here we go." Gobber groaned having to hear this same routine for the nth time. Naturally, Stoick didn't notice.

"…my father told me to lift an asteroid with my bare hands and threw it, and I did it. I thought it was crazy, but I didn't question him. And you know what happened?"

"You sprained your arm."

"That rock smashed a crater on the ship's hull. My dad weren't angry, bless his soul. He put me into the Dragon Slayer program the next day. But above all, Gobber, it taught me what it meant to be a Marauder. We could crush mountains, level forests, tame the dark voids of space! Even as a boy, I knew what I was, what I had to become." For a moment, Stoick was ecstatic, reminded by his past glory of his youth. But as he remembered his son, that liveliness fades, replaced again by exasperation and, to a lesser extent, despair. "But Hiccup… Hiccup is not that boy."

Gobber sighed and decided to throw the bone. "You can't stop him, Stoick. You can only prepare him. Look I know it seems hopeless, and the Krogan example was little bit extreme, but you might want to take a leaf out of our book on this one. Besides, the things we do, **how** we do it… you know that you won't always be around to protect him. He's going to get out there again. He's probably out there now."

While Gobber's words rings some epiphany to Stoick's eyes, at that same moment, it also rings true to a certain redhead in the discussion.

* * *

Flying at a low velocity in an old starfighter, Hiccup look for his scanner as he probed along the asteroid field. Hitching permission for flying a Starfighter for a personal use ain't easy. But this is Gobber's junk fetcher. A starfighter the Krogan often used to scour the battlefield for reusable debris, and Hiccup had learnt how to use it (without crashing into things).

But as the fighter continues to scan the surrounding Hiccup groaned. The sensor picked too much interference. There are too many debris in the Asteroid field.

"If there is a god, then he hates me. Other people lose their gun, their socks… me? I lost an entire Dragon Frigate!" A small chunk of asteroid knocked the starfighter's window, bringing Hiccup's attention. Then he noticed some of these asteroids are flying towards him. More importantly, they're flying in one direction. In the void of space, natural objects flying in one direction are rare, unless affected by external force like gravity. His instinct kicked in, Hiccup decided to go to the direction where these asteroids comes from.

A few minutes later, Hiccup found the source. A large, long, gap forming a long diagonal trail can be seen amidst the field of stationary asteroids. Something crashed through these space rocks. Something big.

Hiccup followed the trail to a relatively large derelict space ship. Hiccup recognized it as an old Alliance Carrier Dreadnought, one of the flotilla's that was shot down and drained years ago. The trail leads to the inside of that ship. Hiccup gulped when he saw a fresh new large hole in that carrier. Something crashed in here.

Parking his starfighter next to that hole, Hiccup went down in his space suit and just as soon as he looked through the hole, he noticed it was the first of a long series of holes. And down there, at the end of these tunnels of walls, he saw a glimpse of a giant black figure, and Hiccup instinctively hid back. He dared himself to peek and gaped.

It was a small frigate class black dragon, the likes of which he had never seen. It was large enough that even he can see it from this distance. The direction of these holes showed that thing crash landed here, and it had smashed through several layers of floor in its free fall.

Hiccup took a handgun and start descending into the ransacked derelict, in Zero-G, he simply swim his way to the bottom. When he finally get to a closer look, he gasped.

It is a dragon. Better yet… it's the dragon he shot down. Ergo, it's the Night Fury. John 'Hiccup' Horrendous Haddock III had become the first ever human to lay eyes upon a Night Fury! Better yet, he became the first to down it!

"Oh, hell yeah! I did it! I did it! This will fix everything!" Now Hiccup dared himself to move in closer to what he assumed a dead dragon. Hiccup look at the huge, cold, silent lump of a frigate. It was completely motionless. "Oh yes! I have brought down the alien!"

As if answering his remark, light suddenly burst up in the interiors of the said downed dragon and two bulbous eyes with slitted irises light up, one looking at Hiccup, shocking him to the floor. Then the boy realized the alien is still alive!

More frightened than he ever was, Hiccup throttled himself backward as he can hear the sound of power building up humming from the said dragon. But mid way, the energy building suddenly went out, as if there is some sort of power failure.

Hiccup heard this and looked back. And then he realized: the Dragon was still damaged. Spikes riddled the many parts of its body. Some had even been violently torn out, apparently from its violent crash landing, leaving exposed circuitry.

That being said, he can still see the Dragon squirms and the sound of power building went on and off time and again. Hiccup cursed himself for not bringing a better weapon but after remembering that he won't be able to use them properly anyway, he resort to use what he have. Replacing the heat sink in his gun, Hiccup pointed the gun at the Dragon's head.

"I'll destroy you dragon. I'll… I'll shoot your head… point blank… and took a piece of you to my dad!" Both Hiccup, and the Night Fury knew the human was right. A handgun won't do much damage at range, but at point blank… and if it was shot at some of the Night Fury's exposed circuitry is bound to do some damage. The Dragon's eyes turned towards Hiccup. And even the human can see the terror in those mechanical eyes. "That's right. I'll take my place among the ranks of the slayers. I'm a marauder!" Hiccup was still half scared but then he remembered all those days he was demeaned and treated like some sort of blight, he repeated the last statement, more to himself than to the dragon. "I'M A MARAUDER!"

The Dragon, realizing the boy was resolute, shut its optics and seemingly resigned. When Hiccup saw this he was one second away from pulling the trigger, but then as he looked at the huge mechanical being before him, every scar he had inflicted seem magnified. Hiccup suddenly no longer saw a mighty dragon which has terrorized his people every raid… in its place, a frail creature, pitiable and in desperate need for help. The sight proves too much, and suddenly, all his resolution fades, and the boy fell down to his back, panting. "What am I doing?"

The dragon still lay there, in silence. It no longer tries to power itself up. Hiccup looked at the sharpnels embedded in the dragon's broken figure. "…I did this… didn't I?" Hiccup remembered, he didn't just shoot the dragon with any missile. It was a missile of his design which fired EMP VI guided sharpnels. Once it gets in, it won't unlatch until given a code. The same shrapnels still embedded within the dragon. And right now… it's preventing the Dragon from powering up and goes full online. He made up his mind and activated his omni tool, and began hacking the sharpnels. The subtle sound of Hiccup typing furiously on his Omni Tool woke the Dragon and its mechanical eyebulb looked at Hiccup, the widened irises showed its surprise.

"I don't know if you understand this but… just listen. These shrapnels are interlinked with a networked encrypted code. My own making. Not the usual Quantum Cryptology, because it doesn't work, thanks in no small part to you guys." Whether Hiccup noticed or not, the Dragon had actually paid attention. "It's encrypted with a code composed of 2718 randomly generated numbers… ones that even I wouldn't know unless if I try to crack it. Which, by the way, I'm about to do. Look… All I'm saying… asking… is be patient okay?"

Soon, a series of numbers appeared on the Omni Tools' screen. Hiccup nodded and begins making calculations, using the floor as calculation sheets. Hiccup was lost in his world of numbers and equations, unaware that the Night Fury was staring at him. God knows how long Hiccup calculated the code, but eventually, he decrypted it and punched in the translated password. Once the password was sent, all the shrapnels fell down, but three still stuck on the Dragon's spinal cord area.

"Oh shit… just great: malfunctioning shrapnels. Stay where you are and don't move!" Hiccup climbed the Dragon's massive figure and head towards the stuck shrapnels. He put both of his hands on one shrapnel and with great difficulty pulled it out. The next came off less easily, and the last one stuck, very deep. Hiccup understands that this last shrapnel is what preventing the said dragon from activating. It has to go. Left with no choice, Hiccup decided to think laterally for once. "I don't know how your body works but… I think this is going to hurt."

He took his handgun and aimed it carefully at the shrapnel from its side.

Two shots and Hiccup's hand gone numb. Upon taking third shot, the damn shrapnel finally breaks. And not long after, the Night fury's body began to shook and the sound of energy build up hums unabated. Energy veins began pulsing ever faster across the surface of its scales. Hiccup suddenly realized what he had done: he just released a Night Fury that he had personally shot down and had every reason to kill him. The realization was a little late, as in one swift move, the giant Dragon Frigate rose up, bowls him over and the dragon pinned the said human to the wall with its massive frontal claws, its index and middle finger hold his neck in a scissor lock.

And then the two finally stare, face to face. And Hiccup was as scared as hell, while the Dragon massive slitted eyes looked at his diminutive self. Anger evident. For a moment there, Hiccup thought this is it. He's going to kill me. Dad sorry for everything. Mom, be seeing you soon. Good bye everyone. Thoughts like that. After several moments of staring contest which seem to go on forever, the Dragon's metallic forward hull was only inches away from Hiccup's face. Eventually, the Night Fury ended the stalemate with only one long and pitched scream of frustration, giving Hiccup full view of its rows and rows of dragon teeth, and the rotating cannon barrel at the depths of its throat.

The Night Fury let go off the boy and flew off, clumsily so in this limited space, as its large frame banged and smashed objects in its way, generating sparks of electricity until finally it disappeared into the depths of the derelict Carrier Dreadnought.

Thanks to the Zero-G, Hiccup descent slowly from his hanging place towards the ground, still shaken by recent events. It took him a while to pick himself up, holster his gun, took two steps back to his starfighter… before he blackout on the spot.

* * *

When he finally returned with the starfighter, the Hooligan was mostly silent. The residents must've gone to rest. After everything he went through that day, Hiccup felt he should too. However, he just couldn't remember how exactly he walk out of the freighter, stroll across the alleys before finally returned to his bunk, just lying there. His mind couldn't stop thinking what happened on that derelict carrier. Why didn't the Night Fury finish him off? It could've… snapped his neck with but a gesture. So why spare him? It doesn't add up. Hiccup is an engineer, he run the logic and the numbers again, and it just not clear. Worse, he even remembered when he was seconds away from shooting the dragon. Why he stopped? He couldn't? No, he wouldn't shoot it. Why?

"Hiccup," Hiccup's train of thought stopped when his father's voice boomed from beyond the door of his bunk. In his surprise he knocked his laptop to the floor, creating a clanking sound (thank goodness everything in the Hooligan is sturdy). "You're awake son?"

Hiccup choked on words on what to say to his father. "Dad! Uh..." Fighting through his nervousness and build up some courage, he opened the bunk door and meet face to face with his dad. "Erh… I have to talk to you. Dad."

"I need to speak with you too, Son." Stoick paused for a moment before intruding to his son's private room.

Both father and son took a deep breath, and simultaneously said what was on their minds. "I decided I don't want to fight dragons/I think you're ready to fight dragons."

However, with the timing was such, the only words voiced coherent enough to both of them are 'to fight dragons'.

"What?" They both asked in harmonic unison.

"Uh, you go first," Stoick said.

"No, you go first," Hiccup shook his head as he argued, crawling back in his bed.

"Alright," Stoick replied, his son noticing that he seemed nervous about something. Until finally, he said it, "Tomorrow, me and a few search teams will make planetary drop to Berk. We're going to try to find the nest, again."

"That's borderline suicidal."

"We're marauders. It's an-"

"Occupational hazard. I understand."

"In the mean time… you…" It must've taken every strength Stoick can muster to finally get to this point. "You… get your wish. Dragon Slayer program it is; you start in the morning."

Hiccup blinked. Did he hear it just right? All these years… he finally get what he wanted… or… what he used to want. After the events with the Night Fury… he just wasn't sure. Absentmindedly Hiccup commented under his breath "Oh man, I should have gone first," now regretting how he should've took the chance, and then spoke aloud to his dad, "Uh , are you sure that's a good idea, Dad? 'Cause I was thinking, ya' know, 'we have a surplus of dragon fighting Marauders. But do we have enough cage guard or shipwrighters?"

"You'll need this," Stoick said, handing his son a large rifle. Or, well it was large to Hiccup, as he nearly stumbled over the weight, while holding it.

"I appreciate the rifle, Dad. But… but…" Now Hiccup is almost desperate. "But the truth is, I… I just… don't wanna fight dragons."

Stoick was a bit silent for a moment, until finally, he laughed a little, "Haha! c'mon, yes, you do," Thinking it was small joke the commander snickered as he made ready to leave.

Hiccup sighed as he tried to make it sound clear to his dad, "Rephrase: Dad, I can't kill dragons."

"Not yet anyway. But Gobber will straighten you up, and you will kill dragons," Stoick insisted.

"No, I'm really very extra sure that I won't," Hiccup continued to defend his choice.

"It's time Hiccup," Stoick was getting more serious, ignoring his son's plea.

"Can you not hear me?" Yelled Hiccup, until he saw his father calmly turn to his direction.

"This, is serious, Son," Stoick stated as he tried to explain, "When you carry this weapon you're not just carrying your own strength, you carry all of us with you. When you carry a weapon, even a child is thrust with a responsibility in his hand. Which means you walk like us, you talk like us, and you think like us." he then gestured at Hiccup, outlining him. "No more of… _this_."

"You just gestured to all of me," said Hiccup, annoyed.

"Deal?" asked Stoick

"This conversation is feeling very one-sided," Hiccup argued, which again fell to deaf ear.

"Deal?" Stoick asked again, raising his voice to emphasize his point across.

Hiccup was silent for a moment, until finally he sighed in defeat and setting the rifle down, "Deal."

"Good." Stoick said as he headed back for the door. "Train hard. I'll be back. Probably."

"And I'll be here. Maybe." Hiccup replied. Both worrying if his father will be back from his suicidal orbital drop mission and how should he deal fighting dragons, now that he knew he wouldn't kill one.

* * *

Dragon Codex:

Night Fury

Frigate class – Stealth Type

Mobility and speed of a fighter, invisibility and accuracy of a stealth bomber, firepower of a dreadnought. A horrifying monster with untold ability and capacity for destruction. Sensors had overheated trying to even get a glimpse of this variant. Infra red scanning once took a glimpse of this monster appearing and then disappearing into warp jump… before its radar jammer fried the camera, finished with a thermo nuclear blast destroying the said scanner, causing its recording to be blurry and bugged, so the authenticity of this report is debatable. But if that is true, and this dragon is able to literally engage on its own hyper drive warp jump to achieve FTL speeds. Something that only the largest dreadnought has the power core to do so. Has a distinctive high pitched scream whose high frequency disable communications over a wide radius.

Oh Yeah! Factor: Apparently, unlike other dragons, Night Fury doesn't have any secondary weapons. It's one and only weapon, the dragon breath requires a noticeable energy build up before firing.

Oh Shit! Factor: as fast as hell. Prolly the fastest of all dragon. Also, it can become a virtually invisible kamikaze bomber… which never misses.

Threat Level: Off the Chart

DO NOT ENGAGE AT ALL COSTS!

Codex Updated:

Berk:

12 light years north from the Dark Space and just a few collapsed star systems too close from the core of the known galaxy, Berk is the only known relatively habitable planet in the midst of the Anubis nebula, the most dangerous nebula seen in dark space. The Nebula was filled with various instabilities: Stars going nova, black holes, meteor rain… The fact that Berk was lush enough to bear sentient life despite its chaotic space condition was already considered a modern day miracle. The planet has around 1.5 times the gravity on earth. The wildlife that lives here, in proportion, are stronger than other wildlife in other planets. That same gravity condition had also been known to pull down mineral rich asteroids off the space, creating an asteroid ring, regularly causing a routine meteor bombardment to the planet's surface for 3 months straight. Contrary to popular perception, the constant meteor bombardment had in fact nurtured the planet's ecosystem in regular basis, keeping the land lush and fertile with the nutrients coming from each meteor rain. This same meteor rain was alleged to be responsible for the planet's heavy Eezo deposits. There have been difficulties on using normal quantum crypto communications in this planet due to possible heavy Dragon colony infestation. For more detailed explanation, search the query: Dragon, Berk.

Dragon:

A terminology used by the Marauders to depict an alien hive minded fully sentient robotic warships which had been found on Berk's space. A highly advanced machine race, named so due to their uncanny resemblance to earthling's depiction of the mythical creature of the same name. It is assumed they have stayed on the planet for over thousands of years ago and perhaps much longer than that, and remain dormant. However, there have yet been any evidence supports such claims. The currently known classes of the Dragons range from the size of a drone to the size only slightly smaller to that of an alliance cruiser. Despite their large sizes, these robotic warships have been known to outmaneuver other ships of the same size by a long shot. There have been confirmed reports that the larger dragons can also land on the surface of the planet without causing too much disturbance to their surroundings despite their size. This implies (Stress: IMPLIES) that they too are using some form Element Zero technology. Though the exact nature of how these sentient machines do so is unknown.

It is known that these fleet of sentient warships work under the command of a single overruling higher brain. With the assumption that one dragon (or several) receives a command from the higher brain dragon (who has yet to be seen) and then relay the signal to another dragon, in which the said dragon will then relay it to another and so forth and so forth. Attempts to intercept these signals had failed due to the Dragon's use of a unique encryption language not recorded in any known method of encryption. When a dragon was cut off from the signals that control them, the mech has been shown to revert to animalistic behavior. The heavy traffic of the Dragon's unique communication signal frequency was also deemed responsible for the heavy electromagnetic flux encircling Berk's atmosphere. This has resulted in most of the tracking equipment and communication system used by the Marauders to fail. That same reason is also what preventing any attempt to scan the location of their colonies, though it is assumed to be a huge one.

Marauder:

A special paramilitary group which is part of the Citadel Council's policy regarding the dark space. To further the reaches of the known galaxy, often times this means sending troops on a suicide mission. To minimize the losses of good able bodied resources, the council turns to another resource: mercenaries. Mercenaries from various factions: Blood Pack, Blue Suns, Yellow Eclipses, SMS, War Pigs, Siege Breakers and Jackson's Revenge were gathered together, given uniform first class commando training and then armed with the latest equipment (bordering on Bleeding Edge) before being sent to dark space, well armed and well paid. With fatality rate of over 80% to 100%, the Marauders were promised a hefty sum of payment for each planet they discovered and pacified. The program had succeeded to expand the council space by 230% and discovery of 40 new alien races (3 of which have become new addition to Citadel Council members: Cybertronian, Zertran, and Protoss) all in a span of 2 decades and 8 expeditions.

To date however, a new trend is rising in that, instead of payment, these marauders would prefer to colonize a planet they pacified once they found a suitable one. This notion gained the support from the Citadel, provided the said established colony remains a part of the council space. As a result, the Marauders evolve from a mere military fleet into a sizable migrant flotilla, composed of several dreadnoughts and a few colony ships carrying colonists in search of a new life. The Marauders and the Colonists formed a self sufficient symbiotic relationship in which colonists will provide the needed manpower and supplies while the Marauders protects them and search for suitable place to call home. To better fund this program, the Council allow Private companies to put their stake and give their finance in exchange of control of the fleet and gain large dividend. This had often led to reported (but unconfirmed) conflict between the Marauders who wish to colonize a planet and the corporation who deemed the planet commercially valuable.


	3. Chapter 3: Dragon Training

Keeping at it…

Update: Changed Tuffnut and Ruffnut into Quarian twins (previous chapters have also been updated). And if some of you noticed the previous chapter, I will be using Aliens from other series (Starcraft, Transformers) as well. Starting with this chapter, added some characters from the book as well (I've never read it though).

Intro of new characters:

Camicazy : Protoss : Dark Templar – Zer'atai clan (ones with lots of bone armors)

Dogsbreath : Cybertronian : a super tank

* * *

"Welcome to Dragon Training Program!" Gobber opened the gates into a large arena.

Every time there's a raid, sometimes there's a chance some guys somewhere managed to disable a dragon. Disable, not destroy. Obviously these still alive Dragon are counted more valuable than the dead ones, because they can be used to train the next generation Dragon slayers. For some reason, when captured these dragons were cut off from the communal hive mind and display animalistic behavior, but it's still a dragon. An entire colony ship, the Maw, was redesigned as a prison ship to cage these surviving dragons. And with the Hooligan and half a dozen dreadnaughts were taken by Stoick on his Dragon Hunt, the Maw became the new flagship of the fleet. At the center of the colony ship, a massive coliseum style arena was built as training grounds.

The group of cadets: Astrid, Tuffnut and Ruffnut, Snotlout, Fishleg entered the arena.

Astrid took a deep breath and whispers herself: "This is it. No turning back."

Others are less conflicted, but go on with their bravado. "I hope I get some serious burns." Tuffnut growled excitedly.

"I'm hoping for some mauling, like on my shoulder or back." Ruffnut added.

"Yeah, it's only fun if you get a scar out of it." Snotlout followed.

Everyone's attentions however, were quickly taken when a familiar dry humored voice sounded from their back. "Yeah, no kidding, right? Pain. Gotta love it." Hiccup went in, dragging his rifle.

"Oh, great. Who let him in?" Snotlout scratched his head. The scene is just wrong in so many ways.

Ignoring the off hand remarks, Gobber snapped his wrench arm loudly to attract their attention. "Waiting for a couple more people and we'll get started."

Fishleg looked around and frowned in confusion. "But… Gobber… including Hiccup, we pretty much make up the latest cadets who make it to the Dragon Training, are we not?"

"There are… several new recruits. A single reinforcement had just arrived when Stoick and the fleet left. And they said there's an exchange program. Some guys from the other Marauder fleet are being sent here to train with us. They wanna know what makes this planet so ticking with problems."

The group waited for several minutes, and then, all the sudden, a black cloud began to appear at the center of the group. Everyone back away, but minutes later, another Alien rose out from the black cloud as it merges into its form. It was almost as if the Alien is made of the black smoke. Hiccup gulped.

The alien was clad in a tattered black cloth, with bones and fangs from various alien creatures. Some he had never even seen before, but judging from the size of those fangs, it's some serious predator. Its face is also enclosed in shroud, but it is unmistakable that the creature… has no mouth. Its eyes glow bright burning green. An alien contraption enclosed both of its arms, which only has 4 fingers. Digitigrade legs, semi-permeable skin covered in scales, broad chests and shoulders, and narrow waists with slim midsections. Its skin is pale in complexion, almost dark purplish. A Protoss Nerazim… or Dark Templar, in human tongue.

"Greetings Gobber the Wrench. I'm Dark Templar, Camicazy. Here for the exchange study program." The Protoss simply nodded to everyone and casually give her id to Gobber.

Everyone gasped at the voice. It… was a she. A female Protoss.

"Wow… the citadel did say they're going to send in some exchange cadet… but… well, a Protoss Dark Templar eh? Interesting." Hiccup can tell Gobber was genuinely interested. "Now we just wait for one more cadet and we're good to go."

No sooner than Gobber said that, a loud explosion burst out from the wall just behind Hiccup as a TANK rolled in, guns blazing. The tank thread forward and was about to ram Hiccup until it seemingly break-apart…no, upon closer inspection it transform into a large mechanical insect like humanoid alien, with various parts of the Tank make up its body.

A mechanical voice sounded from the head, which looked a lot like a bulldog. "DOGSBREATH! REPORTING."

"W…What?" Hiccup, on the floor on his back gasped. A cybertronian?

"DESIGNATION. DOGSBREATH. CADET. STUDENT EXCHANGE." The Cybertronian saluted Hiccup, shoving the emblem of the Citadel on his chest. "REPORTING. STUDENT. EXCHANGE."

Hiccup finally caught on that this oversized humanoid tank thought he was talking to the instructor. "I'm not the instructor."

The Cybertronian continued on, ranting. "SERVED. PRIME. SERVED. REAL. COMBAT. COMBAT. DRAGON. HERE. LEARN."

"EXCUSE ME! I'M NOT THE INSTRUCTOR."

The cybertronian finally stopped. "NO. INSTRUCTOR?"

"He is." Hiccup pointed at Gobber. Dogsbreath tilted its head stupidly.

"YOU. NOT. INSTRUCTOR?"

"Well, duh?" Everyone from Berk echoed, even Hiccup. It was so obvious, isn't it? Hell will have to freeze first before they saw Hiccup became an instructor.

The Cybertronian tilted its head one more time and after 10 seconds of contemplating start making way to the Krogan, nearly trampling at Hiccup as it did so. When he gets there, he repeated everything he said to Gobber, just like a recording machine.

Everyone think in their heads. "Truly a duhbrained machine."

* * *

Chapter 3: Dragon Training

Once Dogsbreath rewinded introduction is over, Gobber start the training in the earnest. "Alright then. Let's get started! You are all are one squad. The recruit who does best will win the honor of leading the squad when ya'll graduate."

"Hiccup already killed a Night Fury so does that mean he's the leader now?" Snotlout joked.

"Can I transfer to the class with the cool guys?" Tuffnut raised his hands.

Gobber ignored the complaints and led the group to the center of the arena. He slow his pace just enough to walk on the same length with Hiccup, giving him some encouragement. "Don't worry. You're small and weak... that'll make you less of a target. They'll see you as sick or insane and go after the more tough teens instead."

Hiccup smiled nervously (part sarcastically) at the comment. Thinking his off the mark pep talk worked, Gobber went ahead toward a series of cells. One can rear loud roars and rumbles behind those cells. Everyone was excited. Everyone except Hiccup.

"Behind these doors are just a few of the many classes of Dragons you will learn to fight! The Deadly Nadder!"

"Speed 78, armor 55." Fishleg start rambling about his RPG datas.

"The Hideous Zippleback…"

"Stealth 60. Firepower 120. Both times 2."

"The Monstrous Nightmare…"

"Firepower 255."

"The Terrible Terror."

"Attack 18, venom 22, vitality 15."

"Can you stop that?" Gobber, finally annoyed, yelled at Fishleg before finishing as he laid his arm on a switch to a cell. "And the Gronckle."

"Defense and Vitality: 255, Jaw strength: 88." Fishleg whispered in a lower tone.

Hiccup gulped. He remembered the first day Gobber teach him anything. If this is in anyway resemble that… well…

"Wait, aren't you gonna teach us first? Or at least let us put on a powersuit or something!" Snotlout finally realized what Gobber about to do.

Gobber replied calmly: "I believe in learning on the job." And with that, he pressed the button, and the cell barrier turned off, and almost instantaneously a giant, robotic object burst out. The cruiser look almost like a giant heavily armed metallic misshapen balloon with two huge rotors on top.

The cadets from Berk knew what was coming. They've seen them many times. But the exchange cadets did not.

"That… floating ugly metal balloon… is a dragon?" Camicazy confused as well as skeptical.

"SHOOT. DOWN!" Dogsbreath pulled out all its guns and aimed them all at the dragon.

Sensing the threat, the Balloon suddenly opened up, revealing a monstrous huge yellow dragon, with large upper arms and relatively smaller rear legs. Its two huge rotors stopped spinning and the dragon landed with loud crash, quaking the entire arena. Parts of the Dragon begin to revert from its compact mode into a form more suited for fighting. Its massive upper arms extend and stomp the floor, giant alien drill-like spiked tank threads grinding at the tip of its massive fingers. On the rear, its equally thick tail also extend, though it's also not as long as the arms, but a large mass forming at the tip of the tail, like makeshift sledgehammer. The twin large rotors also stopped spinning, its blades folded to the back. Its head extend to a length, much less than its tail, but as it roared, one can see a huge gaping maw, with multiple grinder like contraption inside and two pairs of huge long talon on the side of the large mouth. Its spiked lower jaw is several times bigger than its upper, and almost make up the entirety of its face. Like a gorilla, it stomped towards the group of stammered teens on its forward arms. Now instead of a balloon, it's more like a giant tank with legs the size of a small building.

Camicazy's eyes widened and pouted a single telepathic: "Oh."

Dogsbreath is still aiming at the sky for a few seconds before he realized his target had already transformed as well.

And the learning begins.

"Today is about survival. If you get blasted or crushed..."

The Gronckle roared as it smashed its massive hand right where Camicazy stood. The Protoss blinked to a safe distance, while only when the giant arm landed three feet from him did Dogbreath noticed and the slow headed Transformers took steps away from the giant arm.

"...you're dead!" Gobber chuckled. He looked at the dragon, and saw it had also nailed its other arm to the ground. The Gronckle roared once, and suddenly opened its jaw, making it even wider and larger than its own massive chest. From the exposed armor scales, one can notice rotating engines and the dragon's giant of a maw also began to spin faster and faster, creating a vortex that begin to suck things up.

Gobber began teaching: "QUICK! What's the first thing you'll need?"

"A doctor?" Hiccup, panicking, answered.

"Junction 100 Ultima materia to agility?" Even more panicked, Fishleg replied his RPG numbo jumbo.

"A shield battery." Only Astrid gets it right.

"Shield! GO!" The Krogan instructor gestured at a rack full of shield batteries. The teens scrambled towards the rack while the Gronckle continue to suck things up: debris, rocks, and leftovers weaponries from busted out Powersuits, an old Siege tank, anything. At the center of its maw, a dense and blackened circular projectile is forming. While the students quickly attached their batteries to their shoulder, creating a sturdy protective energy shield, Gobber continued his teaching. "Your most important piece of equipment is your shield battery! If you must choose between a power cell for your bazooka or a shield battery, take the Shield battery!" Gobber emphasized this by shoving an extra Shield battery to Hiccup, who fumbled when picking his.

Meanwhile, Tuffnut and Ruffnut began arguing… again. "Let go of my shield!" Ruffnut was holding one end of a small device that is a shield battery. This one simply strikes her fancy because it has an additional skull warpaint on it.

"There's a million shields!" Tuffnut argued. "Take that one. It has a flower...girls like flowers!"

Ruffnut wrestled the battery away and punched Tuffnut's face with it. "Oops, now this one has blood on it."

At that time, the Gronckle had finished sucking things up, aimed at Ruffnut, momentarily charged the projectile in its throat and something exploded down in the Dragon's throat. The flames from the explosion burst out from several exhaust vents in the dragon's back, and most importantly, the explosion propelled the projectile in his mouth at break neck speed.

Ruffnut had just activated her shield battery when the blast shattered the barrier, overloading the generator. It fully blocked the attack, but the shockwave knock the twins off their feet.

"Tuffnut, Ruffnut! You're out!"

"What?" The two groaned simultaneously.

"Every Dragon has at least two weapons. Primary is their Dragon Breath. The secondary weapon is where it gets tricky. What is a Gronckle's secondary weapon?"

"Its huge strong arms, naturally." Camicazy answered.

"Well, yer half right. Every dragon has that." Gobber chuckled. The Gronckle answered the rest of the question by pointing its drill like fingers at the Protoss, and launched them at her, like guided missiles. The said drill tipped projectile narrowly missed the Dark Templar as she blinked away, while the series of finger missiles drilled the ground, creating massive destruction. The Gronckle roared and pulled back its cable linked drilling fingers.

"Well don't worry, Dragons only use their secondary weapons during the cooldown time of their primary weapon. Pop quiz: how long is a Gronckle's cooldown period?"

"Erhh… five seconds?" Snotlout answered.

"No! Six!" Fishleg answered.

"Correct!"

And just then, another blast from the Gronckle head straight towards Fishleg. The shot landed only dangerously close to Fishleg by sheer luck. The Krogan cadet's kinetic barrier activated and overloaded at the same time, shattering it in a heartbeat.

"Fishleg, out." As if expecting this, Gobber chuckled.

Dogsbreath furiously fired all its weaponry, stubbornly (or dumbly is more like it), ignoring the fact all his bullets didn't even so much as to scratch the Gronckle's thick armor.

"Don't bother firing directly at Gronckle. Their armor's too tough."

Apparently, what Gobber said didn't even register in Dogsbreath's audio sensors. The Cybertronian just keep shooting and shooting and shooting and shooting…

"Err… anybody there?"

Until finally, six seconds passed, the Gronckle, having literally swallowed up all of Dogsbreath's ammo, fired the newly condensed fresh projectile and ripped off Dogsbreath arm, simultaneously sending the large bulky bot off his feet, plastering him to the wall behind.

"Dogsbreath… out!"

"…ARM. SHOT. BULLETS. DRAGON. EAT."

"Well duh!" Gobber added, frustrated at the Cybertronian slow processing speed. "Oh and I forgot to tell you this but, never, ever try to block a Gronckle shot head on. It'll shatter your shield and, if yer unlucky, the overload will vaporize ya. Use your shield to protect yerself from the BLAST, NOT the shot."

"You know, we could use that little piece of information a little earlier?" Hiccup was hiding behind debris as his life depends on it.

"HICCUP! GET IN THERE!" Gobber roared in annoyance.

Hiccup gulped, took one step out of the cover and the Gronckle shoot right next to him. Hiccup duck down and cower beneath the shield, engulfed by the blast, screaming as he did so, but the shield protected him from the incoming shrapnels, just like Gobber had said it would. When the blast ended, Hiccup nervously get back on his feet, his shield still on. The Krogan instructor was pleased.

"That's right! Just like that Hiccup! See that guys? Block the blast, not the shot!"

"Beginner's luck!" Snotlout fired its rifle as he moved forward and stood right next to Astrid. He noticed Astrid was using a Revenant Assault rifle – one handed. "Wow. I guess some humans are quite tough. You work out?"

Ignoring the question, the girl jumped away swiftly just as the Dragon fired its fifth shot of the day. Snotlout panicked and ran off, activating his shield as the blast hits him. Due to his late reaction though, the blast hit him full, shattering his shield.

"Lout! Yer out!"

"Hey? I thought you said I had to block the blast?"

"Block the blast, not the shot. That's what I said. But don't stand too close to the blast though. You'd still be dead if ya do. Heheheh."

"This thing must have a weakness!" Now only Camicazy, Hiccup and Astrid remained.

"Every part of a dragon which is armored is not a weak spot. So the only weak spot is the spot where it is less armored. Pop quiz! Extra points for attacking the first unarmored part you see!"

Astrid and Hiccup were still looking on what Gobber meant, but Camicazy caught the meaning quickly. "Of course." She blinked and appeared right next to the Gronckle's right eye. Activating her twin vorpal blades, the Protoss Dark Templar attempted to stab the dragon's eye. A kinetic barrier formed and blocked the attack, but only for a while. Camicazy slashed the barrier apart with one blade, and the other blade punched its way through, stabbing the dragon's eye. She quickly blinked as the next second, the dragon was roaring angrily, clearly in pain. Luminescent blue and hot liquid spilled out from the gaping hole that was once its eye.

"Well done Camicazy! That's right. The only unarmored part of the dragon is its eyes. The only downside is that, you took one eye out you'll piss em off! A pissed off dragon is a deadliest dragon."

True to Gobber's words, the Gronckle was furious! It took one earth quaking step and then circle around, horizontally sweeping its massive tail across the arena.

Gobber easily dodged the sweep with a hop while the kids had to duck. Camicazy was a little less fortunate however. One of the Gronckle's tail spines caught a tip of her cloak and threw her off the arena.

"Camicazy, yer out!"

"So it's just you and me, huh?" Hiccup and Astrid are the only one left with intact shield now. The two stood side by side looking at the dragon, who was charging its shot.

"Nope, just you." Astrid dodged again while Hiccup turned to see the Gronckle fired its latest shot. Hiccup barely dodged the shot, but the incoming blast finally shattered his shield.

"Hiccup! Your shield's down. Out!" Gobber decreed.

"Right! I'm out of here!" Hiccup and Astrid both ran off to opposite direction, one escaping, the other intent to fight some more, but the Gronckle, having had its right eye blinded didn't see Astrid and went at Hiccup again.

Gobber's eyes widened when he realized the Dragon is gunning for Hiccup.

"HICCUP!"

When he heard his name being called, Hiccup turned around and saw the Gronckle is stomping its way towards him. "The will of the universe just hates me don't they?"

The Gronckle roared and launched its cable missile fingers at Hiccup.

"WHAAAAAAA!" Hiccup turned around and closed his eyes in fright. Miraculously the claws missed the mark, since the target in question was quite small. But Hiccup is now pinned down amidst the dragon's thick cable cords.

The Gronckle eyed its target before opening its jaw, gathering stuff, ready to fire again. A projectile was forming at the depths of its throat. Hiccup knew what was coming and closed his eyes.

At the last possible moment, a power suit crashed into the Gronckle's upper jaw, shutting its mouth shut, causing an internal explosion. It was Gobber in his Krogan specialized power suit.

"Oh no, ye're not gonna eat him ya overglorified vacuum cleaner!" Gobber smashed the dragon's head several times, earning himself a few shards off the Dragon's face. Gobber grabbed a huge gun (huge even for a Krogan in a power suit) and start firing at the Dragon's arm several times until it finally came off. The Gronckle roared in pain, losing its main body support and came crashing down to the ground, twitching as glowing ooze start flowing out of its many gaping wounds.

"Well, clear to me now ya guys still got a LOOONG way to go on dealing a full grown Gronckle."

"A full grown… wha… this Gronckle is still… infant?" Camicazy gasped. The kid was already this big, how big adult ones can go?

"Apparently they bring their whole family to the raid every time. But infant or not, they're still dangerous. These dragons are weird mechanical monster see… the more electricity they drain, the bigger they get." Fishleg explained.

"The big ones, the real ones are the size of a cruiser. It can rip apart a frigate with its arms." Astrid followed. "We've seen it."

"That's right. Last lesson for the day: a dragon always…" Gobber turned to Hiccup and emphasized the word. "ALWAYS, go for the kill. And so should we." The Krogan instructor cocked his gun, aimed at the downed Gronckle and shoot, blasting the head, finishing it off.

Looking at the blasted head of the Gronckle, hiccup touched his neck and suddenly remembered a very similar situation some time ago with a certain Black Dragon. But the thing is, it ended differently.

* * *

"Go for the kill? So why didn't you?"

In a short order, Hiccup was already back to the derelict carrier, which he had just learned the name to be the SSV-Equator. The teen looked at one of the shrapnel he pulled out yesterday, wondering what becomes of the black dragon. He looked around and saw lots of trashing and clawing.

"This is stupid. It's a dragon. It's a frigate. He must've flown off some-" No sooner than Hiccup said that, the whole carrier suddenly quaked and a loud crash of something heavy just fell on top of them. Hiccup's first guess: a meteor. But the ship didn't explode so it must be something else.

Hiccup activated his M-boots and start making his way through the carrier. He was halfway there when the carrier shook for the second time that day. "Is there something on the deck?"

After a trek in the ship's insides, Hiccup finally managed to get to the surface, specifically the launch pad. He peeked out of the manhole and saw a lot of bent marks and burning gashes adorning the flat surface of the carrier's launching pad, as if something had repeatedly crashlanded on the surface.

"I… don't… get this…" Suddenly a huge black shadow just zoomed overhead and crashed into the launch pad.

"WHOA!" Hiccup hid back by reflex. He peeked out of the manhole and saw it.

The Night Fury.

The Black dragon warship had just crash landed on the ship's launch pad, roaring angrily.

With the sun shining on them, now Hiccup gets a better look at the draconic frigate. A far cry different with the bulky tank Gronckle or the ferocious Nightmare, it is magnificent. The Dragon's outer look mostly bereft of any spines or scales common to most other dragons and very smooth. Aerodynamic is the word. It has three sets of wings and fins, seamlessly connected with one another. The first set of wings is the largest and the most eye catching, with multiple appendages coursing with electricity and a massive oversized (and clearly overcharged) engine. Situated over his back and just on top and behind its forward arms. Hiccup noticed the dragon also used this first set of wings as a second set of arms. The second set of wings is smaller than the first and situated slightly below the first, but overlapping it, with multiple appendages adorning its edges. This part constantly trembling and humming. The last set of wings is more akin to fins than wings and it is situated at the tip of its tail.

Hiccup used the cameras in his visor and took many, many pictures. Each part was taken multiple times. With each picture he took, Hiccup grew more enamored with the said dragon. This thing is made to fly. But then, a question strikes his fancy. "Why didn't you just… fly away?" Hiccup spoke out loud, knowing in open space no one can hear.

Then his question was answered when Hiccup noticed the Dragon only have 5 wings instead of six. An exposed and shredded broken circuitry was shown where they should've been a second fin on its tail. As Hiccup noticed this one wound, he further noticed other sets of damage. Other many exposed circuitry and broken parts and wirings can be seen here and there. Glowing liquid coursing with electricity drips here and there. The Dragon WAS magnificent… until he shot it down and made it… this. More and more Hiccup felt guilty for being the one who had done this.

The Dragon gets back on its feet and start humming. Electricity building across its lower underbelly and it begin to float before catapulted across the launch pad and took off. Hiccup gaped in awe as the appendages on the Dragon's wings burst with brilliant purple light, being the Dragon's booster engines, leaving a trail of ion in its wake. Then the dragon starts brimming with electricity. Hiccup knew what it is. The dragon is going to engage its FTL drive and perform its Warp Jump trick.

It was then, midflight, the wings begin to disorient and for a moment a small thunderstorm appeared. But finally the Dragon disorients even further and the thunderstorm died down as the Night Fury's went down. The dragon growled and redirected his fall towards the Equator. Hiccup gulped and ducked down into the manhole as the Dragon crashed on the Carrier's launch pad. Again.

As the robotic warship roared in obvious frustration, Hiccup dared to peek out again. "So that's why." The dragon was still roaring when, in one of its bout, it smashed its tail on the ship's surface, shaking the carrier yet again. Hiccup yelped and his visor was taken off.

"Ah!" Hiccup made an attempt to reach for the visor, but it was soon out of reach, and in the void of space it floats on and on until it touched the Night Fury's tail fin. It was just a small clunk, but the Night Fury clearly felt that. It turned around and saw the very nervous Hiccup.

Blue human eyes met with a digital yellow dragon eyes.

The two looked each other for a long, long time. And the visor just float between them, innocently (as innocent as a visor can be) oblivious to the awkward situation.

* * *

Hiccup didn't know how long the two stare one another. He remembered how he managed to get back to the Maw even less. Securely rested in his right hand was his visor. The Dragon didn't even do anything and just watched on when he took it and went back to his manhole. On his left, a recording of his own personal journal which he made on his trip back and played over and over again to get his mind off things.

When he gets to the mess hall, he noticed the cadets are sitting on a large table with Gobber re-evaluating today's progress.

"All right, where did Astrid go wrong in the ring today?"

"I mistimed my somersault dive. It was sloppy. It threw off my reverse tumble."

"Yeah, we noticed." Ruffnut simply shook her head, not exactly caring.

"No, no, you were great. That was so "Astrid."" Snotlout replied.

But Gobber shook his head. "She's right. You have to be tough on yourselves." Gobber noticed Hiccup and followed on: "Now, where did Hiccup go wrong?"

The response?

"He showed up."

"He didn't get eaten."

"LUCKY. SHOT."

The worst response came from Astrid being: "He's never where he should be."

Hiccup swallowed it all up. With friends like this, who needs enemies eh?

Gobber shook his head at the obviously less than inspiring comments. "Thank you, Astrid." He then addressed everyone in the hall. "You need to live and breathe this stuff. The Dragon Codex." He showed them all a pack of brick-like old school paper and ink dictionary. "Everything we know about every dragon we know of. No attacks tonight. Study up. This is your homework. Everyone read at your leisure, but Camicazy and Dogsbreath, you have to read this since you two obviously never seen a dragon before."

Camicazy nodded, but Dogsbreath (whose arm still dangling) only tilted its head. "READ? HOMEWORK? WHAT?"

"Wait, you mean read?" Ruffnut jerked at the notion.

"While we're still alive?" Tuffnut was equally unenthusiastic.

"Why read words when you can just kill the stuff the words tell you stuff about?" Snotlout was also seemed repulsive at the idea.

"I've read it seven times. There's this water dragon that sprays highly pressurized, steel cutting boiling water at your face. And there's this other one..." Fishleg was the only one excited and start blabber on in front of horrified Quarian twins.

"Yeah. That sounds great."

"There was a chance I'd read it..."

"But now..."

"You guys read. I'll go kill stuff." Ignoring the book, Snotlout just went walked out, quickly followed by other like minded cadets.

"Another one has spines like trees."

"So I guess we'll share?" Hiccup offered, but Astrid just walk away.

"Read it." So she said.

Hiccup turned and saw Camicazy took a copy. "I'll read it in my bunk. Good night, Hiccup." The Dark Templar blinked away.

Dogsbreath just eyed at the copies of the books before transforming and left.

"All mine, then. Wow. So, OK, I'll see you..." Hiccup looked around and noticed no one was around. "…tomorrow." Hiccup finished to no one in particular. An outcast even amongst the cadets.

He opened the book and start reading.

Dragon classifications.

Fighter class.

Frigate class.

Cruiser class.

Carrier class.

Thunderdrum.

Frigate Class

This reclusive dragon inhabits sea caves and dark tide pools.  
When startled, the Thunderdrum produces a wave of ultrasonic blast that can rattle a building to its frames.

Threat level: Extremely dangerous.

Shoot on sight.

Swarmer.

Carrier-class.

This warship of a dragon unleash countless razor sharp swarm from its wings, dubbed Shuriken swarm and slice through neo steel like hot knife through butter.

Threat level: Extremely dangerous.

Shoot on sight.

Scauldron.

Frigate Class.

Amphibious. Fires highly pressurized acid in a stream of water at FTL speed that can cut through barriers and armors.

Threat level: Extremely dangerous.

Shoot on sight.

"Gronckle. Zippleback. The Skrill." Hiccup grew more terrified with each entry he read. "Bone Knapper. Whispering Death."

"Burns its victims. Buries its victims. Chokes its victims. Turns its victims inside out." The more he read, the more he found the word Threat level: Extremely dangerous. Extremely dangerous. Shoot on sight. Shoot on sight. Shoot on sight.

Until finally, he landed on two entries which is bereft of any pictures and with even less information but its Threat Level were a class of their own. The first one, he knew right away being the Night Fury.

The other one was even more intriguing:

The Phantom Overlord

Unknown class

A mysterious Dragon Warship sighted most often in the dark side of the Planet Berk. No one has ever encountered this dragon and lived to tell the tale. Most recently, an entire fleet of 8 Dreadnoughts was destroyed in a span of 15 minutes after contact. Survivors are reduced to space dementia and serious mental instability. Testimony from these survivors (as questionable as it may be) suggested that the Phantom used a method of brain washing or indoctrination that caused its victims to open fire upon one another. This entry was made using leftover data from the pieces of black box of what's left of the unfortunate fleet that ran into this dragon. Authenticity is still questioned.

Both the Phantom and the Night Fury has the same threat level and warning:

Threat level: Off The Chart.

DO NOT ENGAGE AT ALL COST!

Hiccup frowned. Do not engage? Oh he had engaged the first Dragon alright. He put his visor on the table and turned on the picture viewer. The holographic image of the downed Night Fury appeared on the table.

Looking at the report from the book and the one he had seen, Hiccup cannot help but to ask himself one question:

What part of this guy is dangerous, really?

* * *

Size comparison:

Starfighter: One men fighter. Just slightly smaller than a modern day tank. About the size of a car. The technology allows various components' size to be greatly reduced.

Freighter: Slightly larger Starfighter, but still a one or three man vehicle.

Power Suit: Slightly bigger than a freighter when one compare the length of the ship with the Power suit's height. But it made the wearer twice bigger. Some modification made them thrice as big. (Stoick and Gobber's suits were such suit) Not an exaggeration to call this power suit a humanoid tank.

Frigate: An interim class between starfighters and cruiser. Significantly larger than a fighter but noticeably smaller than a cruiser. Able to carry a small group of task force (5-10 max) but only require around 1-4 crew to pilot. Fighters cannot board Frigates.

Cruiser: Ranging from slightly larger than a building to twice as large as a Frigate. Some Cruiser can accommodate starfighters inside.

Dreadnought: Big enough to manufacture other class of ship inside, but more offensive oriented. The only ship bigger than the Dreadnought is the Carrier.

Carrier: Large enough to house multiple cruisers and frigates inside.

Colony ship: a flying city. Any question?

Dragon Codex:

Gronckle

Cruiser Class – Tank Type

A cross between a tank, a mechanical zeppelin and a helicopter, the Gronckle is the heavily armored heavy hitter of the Dragon Warship Fleet. Its size ranging from a small building (infant) to the size of a cruiser, capable of literally ripping apart a frigate with its arms. Technically the largest out of all dragons. The Gronckle has a two way dragon breath system. It starts by creating a singularity in its massive jaw, absorbing objects and stuff into it. The object were crushed to molecular size as they were sucked in and then condensed into an incredibly dense projectile, held aloft in a self generated mass effect field (measurement of the projectile's shrapnel estimates the full projectile weighs around a few hundred tons at max). The Gronckle can keep this condensed projectile in its mouth for as long as needed until the time to fire. When it does, the Gronckle triggered some sort of nuclear explosion inside its throat, the power of the explosion were then funneled through the main maw and propel the mass accelerated projectile, capable of reaching incredible distance at FTL speed for interplanetary destruction. The Dragon fleet in Berk has been known to use a series of Gronckles as planetary defense to shoot down incoming objects from space or as an artillery piece to bring down defenses from safe distance. The Gronckle was also known to be able to dig deep and fast into the ground when needed.

Armaments: Close quarter to extreme range artillery heavy hitter. Fully armored with retractable limbs and has incredible brute strength. His frontal arm are the biggest limbs of the body. Prefer to bash its target rather than chunking its cable linked missile fingers at em. Its rear leg and its tail contain a fully functioning drill, presumably for digging to the ground or to steady its aim. The Grockle can quickly build up speed when flying in a straight line for a charge, so watch out or they'll leave more than a nasty bump.

Oh, yeah! Factor: Incredibly slow on the ground, and only slightly faster on air but became practically defenseless. A shooting gallery of oversized balloons when confronted on air to air combat, some pilots say.

Oh, shit! Factor: Tougher dragon than the Gronckle has yet to be found. Highly maneuverable VTOL (thanks to its rotor based flight system) but take some time to build up speed. And watch out for its tail.

Threat Level: B+

Never engage without heavy weapon or numbers.

Codex updated:

Protoss

The Protoss are a sentient humanoid race native to the planet Aiur. When the Marauder Expedition led by Commander James Raynor found them, they were recently engaged in a devastating war with the zerg, their primary opponents. Thanks to James Raynor aid and no small amount of sacrifice from his men, the war was brought swiftly to an end, and ever since, the Protoss had a very strong relationship with the Humans.

They are technologically advanced and rely on psionic abilities and cybernetics in battle. The Protoss race are all a natural born Biotics (though they prefer to call it Psionic) and counted among the most powerful biotics in the known galaxy. Perhaps due to their unique physiology, the Protoss themselves have different way to utilize their biotic capabilities. The Protoss technology centered on the use of crystals and high yield psonics emitter called Pylons. They've even developed their own method of FTL. Historical records shown the Protoss was once altered by a race called the Xel-Naga. Although initially assumed that the Xel-Naga is another naming for the Protheans, it is later discovered that the two are in fact distinct races. It is generally assumed then that the Xel-Naga is another alien race hailing from the same age as the Prothean.

The Protoss of Aiur are highly religious and follow a strict code known as the Khala. But the Protoss themselves are split into two society. The mainstream protoss who reside in Aiur, and another band of Protoss not sharing the communal link of Khala who reside in the dayless planet of Shakuras. These… heretical Protoss was named Nerazim or literally Dark Templar. During the battle against the Zerg, Jim Raynor aided as a neutral ambassador to both sides which eventually united the two factions. Not too long after, the Protoss joined the Citadel as a member of the Council. To date, the Protoss are the latest alien race to join the citadel council membership with Prelate Zeratul, a prominent Nerazim elder, became the High Council for Protoss.

Cybertronian/Transformers

A native to the planet Cybertron. The human's terminology gave them the naming Transformers due to the Alien's innate ability to assume (at least) two forms: an insectoid humanoid form and a vehicle form. The Cybertronian was discovered on a Marauder Expedition led by Commander Lewis Lennox. Unfortunately, at the time, initial response is less than friendly. The Transformers were engaged in a massive and devastating galaxy wide civil war. Caught up in between, the marauder expedition, having never seen a Cybertronian before, thought they came across a Geth weapon experiments gone wrong and open fire. The expeditions were pulled back almost immediately with massive lost of lives. But the worst part is that the violent faction of the civil war, the Decepticons, downloaded the coordinates of earth and deemed it a viable expansion alternative and had already infiltrated the expedition by having some of its members disguised itself as earth vehicles.

A battle took place on Earth, as the other faction, the Autobots also landed on earth, and the battle nearly destroying the entire planet, but thankfully, the Alliance force managed to keep the destruction to the New York city. However, the transformers were seen with a negative point of view by the Earthlings ever since. It wasn't until a second, more official expedition led by alliance Commander Samuel Witwicky is met with a more friendly response. The leader of Cybertron, Optimus Prime, took full responsibility over the destruction of Earth and many other worlds over the course of their millennia old civil war, while fully expressing the desire to join the citadel council. After much debate and persuasion, Optimus Prime finally stepped down from his seat of leadership, with a new leader, chosen by way of democracy, being former Intel Operative Bumblebee, while the former prime now joined the Citadel Council as the High Council for Cybertron.

The Cybertronians are infiltrator by nature. They are an old race, older than even the Protheans, and thus they are the most technologically advanced race in the known universe, with each and every one of members of their race are virtually capable of interstellar travel without the use of any interstellar spaceship (Though they still use them when transporting heavy equipment or colonization). Due to their nature to assume many forms of vehicle from any known race, the Cybertronians are under strict monitoring by the citadel council and their military strength is severely limited. Such was their technology, each and every one of their race is considered a walking, talking, living superweapon, and all forms of Cybertronian weaponry or tech which has military applications are banned. Due to their galaxy wide civil war though, nowadays many of such tech can be found trafficking in the black market.

Hiccup's Journal Rec. 1:

Visual appearance wise, the Night Fury is different with all other appearance of the dragon I've seen. There are no mounted secondary weapons, no spikes, no horns or whatever. His bodily structure is smooth to allow really fast maneuvering, both in atmospheric combat and in space. The black coloration visually aided him to take cover in the blackness of the void. I also see it has three pairs of wings. One pair, the largest of all and it has this large oversized engine with multiple boosters, capable of breaking a hell lot paces. My energy frequency readings on those wings also indicate the same frequency one would find in hyperdrive core of largest Battlecruiser Dreadnoughts. So the codex were right – for once. Night fury can engage Warp Jump Hyperspace travel alone. Its energy core output must be staggering.

The second pair of wings had its energy reading off the scale. It constantly cycling and storing energy from the nearby solar, mixing it with its own energy, redirecting, storing it… there's an activity in those wings that seem to regulate its energy. I don't have a lot to work with, but I think it's safe to assume the second pair of wings is tasked to power the contraption of the first set of wings… other than being wings themselves.

The third pair of wings is located on the tip of its tail. I guess it work as stabilizer but there's something… else. I notice a lot of chatter on it, a lot of… something. One of the wings is broken, due to a recent crash landing (thanks in no small part to me) and for some reason I cannot fathom… it seems to prevent the Night Fury to jump into Warp Jump. I'm guessing it requires the last set of wings as a stabilizer but somehow, in the voidness of space I had a feeling it serve more than flight stabilizers.

When it take off, it use the same principles of a super conductor. The Night Fury's underbelly must be some form of superconducting material which produced a supercharged reversed electromagnetic field which enables it to float and then catapult itself like the old school mass driver. This is far different than the traditional combustion type boosters found on other Dragons. More data pending. _End of recording._


	4. Chapter 4: Choosing a Side

Venturing into Berk's dark side was strictly inadvisable at best, suicide at worst. Reason: the Dragons are heavily active even in the dark of a night. ESPECIALLY, in the dark of the night. They can see you even in the pitch black darkness. Being extremely territorial and ever so wary of their rear, the Dragon Fleet had assigned their own task force of patrol consists of the fleet of the fiercest of dragons. They know the darkside is also a window of chance for enemies to approach and they will attack anyone venturing too close. And yet, Stoick the Vast was about to do something worse than just venturing too close.

"Prepare to make landfall!" Stoick ordered. The announcement was relayed to around half the military fleet of the entire flotilla Stoick brought along.

"You really are going to do this Stoick?" Spitelout gulped.

"We can't turn back now. They're close. Somewhere in this dark side of Heaven in Hell. I can almost smell them." And just then, something burst out from the surface of the planet. A red projectile barely missing a dreadnought. "See? They know we're coming, and they respond in force. They know we're near to… whatever they're guarding."

"Their lair."

"Precisely."

Down below, on the surface of Berk, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Terrors were either swarming the sky or rushing on the ground, slithering around other larger dragons, Nightmares, Nadders, Zipplebacks, the gigantic Swarmers, the lot.

Dozens upon dozens of full adult Gronckle burst out from the ground. They looked upward to the sky above and stomped all their legs to the ground, nailing it. They opened their mouths and began sucking things up, preparing for a projectile. When it is done, they aimed upwards and almost simultaneously fired their red fiery projectiles to the human fleet high above.

On the space, the barrage of large heavy projectiles began to forcibly break the fleet's formation apart. One frigate got hit right in the center while a cruiser crashed into another trying to dodge the shot.

"EVASIVE MANEUVER!" Snotlout yelled.

"And have the bombardment cannons went ahead to bomb blast that rock. And ready the dropships and pods. We got some dragons to slay."

In a short order, Stoick is in his power suit and yelled. "COME ON YOU YELLOW MONKEYS! YOU WANNA LIVE FOREVER? LET'S DINE IN HELL!"

"HOO-HA!" The soldiers in power suits all yelled rocking their large rifles and start going into the drop pods. The infantry went into the Dropship. Inside the ship, the squad leader gives some pep talk to a battalion of his War Pigs before the fall. "We're part of the first wave! Which means when the rock is blasted we got the first chance to do some more damage. You get in there and you shoot down anything that standing on more than two legs and flying around spouting fireballs! DO YOU GET ME!"

"WE GET YOU SIR!" The soldiers answered in uniform.

The Dreadnoughts aimed a series of large cannons to the surface of the Planet. "GAUSS MAC (Magnetic Accelerated Cannon) fully charged. Fire." The Gauss Cannons, brimming with electricity unleash their payload of molten plasma shock rounds to the surface of Berk.

Down below, the attack rained upon the Dragons. Thousands and tens of thousands of Terrors were destroyed with each shot. A shot went through a Gronckle just as it fired. The blast disorients its aim, and its internal explosion erupted, engulfing other nearby dragons, killing hundreds more. Despite the obvious astronomical level of casualties, some Dragons still managed to survive and still can fire back. Several Nightmares and Nadders seem pissed enough to start flying upward towards the fleet. Several Swarmers had began engaging its thrusters and moving out of the Berk's atmosphere.

One by one, the Dropships set off from the starships while the Drop Pods were shot down to the planet amidst the crossfire of destructive artillery barrage exchange from the surface below and from their own fleet above.

Mid-fall, the Dragon Fleet who were on atmospheric exit meet up with the falling dropships who were on atmospheric entry. Some ignore them, some decided to attack them. A Nightmare just crashed into the dropship, tearing open a rupture, instantly frying everyone inside in their seat during the atmospheric entry. A Nadder was destroyed along with a drop pod that collided with it. A dropship was crushed on a Swarmer's kinetic barrier as it ignorantly ascended out of the atmosphere.

The Nightmare had just caught a drop pod and intent on crushing it in its claws when a barrage of Armor Piercing rounds instantly riddling the Dragon's claw with bullets, obliterating it. The nightmare was unfortunate enough to go after a drop pod… with Stoick inside. The Commander tore open his now useless Drop Pod and hop on to the Nightmare. The Nightmare roared rebelliously but Stoick used his chain saw blade and cut a hole on its chest area before shoving both of his guns into it and fired an entire magazine. A series explosion occurred as the nightmare was torn inside out and finally went offline. Using the now derelict Dragon cruiser as a shield for atmospheric entry, Stoick hold on tightly.

In space above, Spitelout had just entered the fray with his custom war freighter along with his squadron of starfighters when the Dragon Fleet starts flying out of the planet. "Here they come. This is Squadron Leader Wraith 1, Offensive maneuver! I repeat Offensive maneuver! Fire and engage!"

The Swarmers unleashed their shuriken swarm and the battlefield were soon filled with whizzing and slithering razor sharp drones, limiting enemy Starship's maneuverability. While other Dragons, unhindered, crashed into the incoming starfighters, who also began unleashing their own payload. Hordes of Terrors, thrust vectoring like a maniac without fear of blackout or anything an organic pilot would suffer, stopped right in front of a startled starfighter pilot and fired its dragon breath, point blank.

A long pitched tone sounded from Spitelout's VI as it locked on. Without further ado the Turian gave everything his ship got, taking down a group of Terrors with one salvo. "Take that you sons of bitches!"

Down below, despite the casualties, hundreds of Dropships and pods finally landed on the lush planet in the dark night. The Dropship doors opened and from inside scores upon scores of human soldiers poured out. While the Drop Pods also unload their packages of heavy hitters: Dragon Slayers and Tanks.

The soldiers marched on before stopping at the sight before them. Two Gronckles burst out of the ground, gather up things and then shot projectiles to the sky, claiming God knows how many ships in its path.

"Nuke'em!"

Four marines pulled out their M920 Cain bazookas, took aim and fired just as the Gronckles finished charging up. The Nuclear projectile hit them full and the Gronckles exploded in a brilliant conflagration, taking out surrounding terrors to dust. Once the explosion settles, the Squad leader yelled. "Follow me!"

The infantry followed. But the squad leader was too eager; a Terrible Terror suddenly sprang out from the shadow and impaled the squad leader with its forward arm.

"FIRE! FIRE!" The infantry began to open fire en masse while the squad leader was screaming in pain, still dangling on the dragon's claw. The Terror roared and start gathering energy and fired a small but dense fireball (AN: Kinda like Toothless's fire in the movie). The marines managed to blocked the shot with their shield and continue to fire. The Terror's kinetic barrier is also holding, but it's getting weaker and weaker. The Terror, tired of its victim's scream, transform its arm into a Gatling gun and fired, ripping the man to pieces. At the same time, its kinetic barrier shattered and the Marines were quick to riddle it with holes.

As the Starfighter dragon fell offline, one of the marines shouted and pointed to the sky: a massive dragon descended. The Swarmer.

The other pointed to the front and thousands upon thousands of Terrors suddenly appeared out of warp jump and came upon them like flood. Following closely behind from the sky and ground, Nightmares, Nadders, Zipplebacks had just warped in near the Swarmers and a few new fresh Gronckles also burst out.

The Infantry, even backed by the Dragon Slayers and Tanks can't help to be unnerved by the overwhelming sight. Suddenly a large fireball descended and hit the Swarmer squarely on its head. The Swarmer screeched as flames start erupting from its throat and down to its chest. Finally, the whole dragon crashed to the ground, with earth shattering force, squeezing the thousands of Terrors and even a few of other frigate and cruiser class dragons to oblivion. Jumping out of the flaming head of the destroyed Dragon Carrier, was Stoick.

His first words being: "I need a reload!"

The Infantry cheered. But their cheer was cut short as from the sky another Dragon fleet, larger than the previous descend and rushed towards them.

Stoick snorted angrily and ready himself. The Infantry and other Dragon slayers rally towards him.

"Come and get us ye devils!" And with that, they opened fire.

* * *

Chapter 4: Choosing a side

"Hey, you know, I just happened to notice the book had nothing on Night Furies. Is there another book, or a sequel? Maybe a Night Fury pamphlet?" Just as soon as Hiccup finished, a blue ion laser beam struck his rifle and destroy it down to the last molecule, leaving only the handle.

"Focus, Hiccup! You're not even trying!" Gobber yelled from the office high above. Today's training was dealing with an infant Deadly Nadder. That being said, the Infant was the size of an old school fighter jet (AN: Think F22 Raptors), but already they're as heavily armed as the adult ones. A blue, smooth dragon, almost as smooth as the Night Fury was floating with the aid of its VTOL booster's positioned on its wings and legs, nimbly floating about the arenas, which, for this week's training, are designed to look like maze of a jungle. "Today it's all about attack! Nadders are quick and light on their feet. And when I say light, in urban combat they almost never touch the ground. Your job is to be quicker and lighter!"

Camicazy growled angrily as the Dragon continues to fly around as if dancing in the air not giving her even a moment's chance to close in and cut it apart. The Dragon noticed her, and swivel around, revealing a pair of what looked like an Alien equivalent to Gatling gun with six barrels, one Gatling gun for each wing.

Cursing something in her native tongue, the Protoss blinked away just as the Nadder unleashed a volley of large caliber pulse ammo, obliterating the area.

It turned around again and saw Fish Leg stumble over the corner. It roared and the scales on its fin stood up, and the dragon's rear section bent forward, like a bee ready to sting. Only instead of stabbing the target, Nadder's tail unleashed a whole onslaught of homing missiles.

Panicking, Fishleg run while shielding himself around the barrage of missiles. "I'm really beginning to question your teaching methods!" He screamed, half angry, half scared to death.

Ignoring the complaints about his teaching methods, Gobber continued his teaching over the safe distance of the office (curse him, everyone thought). "Look for its blind spot! Every dragon has one. Find it, hide in it and strike!"

The twins had just turned around the wrong corner and came face to face with the Nadder, right beneath it. The thing is, the Nadder seem to ignore them. That's when they realized this is the blindspot that Gobber was talking about. The Dragon can't see what's right in front of it.

The two duck and cover carefully and nimbly right in front of the Dragon while try to their best to remain hidden. It would've gone well if Ruffnut's olfactory sensor didn't catch a God Awful smell from her brother's enviro suit. "Ugh! Do you ever bathe?"

"If you don't like it, then just get your own blind spot."

"How about I give you one?" Ruffnut smashed her helmet to Tuffnut's, creating a clanking noise. A noise which the Nadder heard and responded violently. It opened its mouth and charged its ion cannon. The twins had only a second to dodge as a stream of ion blast tore through. The Nadder even swung the beam around in a small arc, and like an extremely long sword slice through everything in its path. Creating a chaos amongst the other cadet as their hiding spot were suddenly cut apart.

"AAAAAAAAAHHHH!" Fishleg ran from his spot as the ion blast burned a tip of his suit.

"Blind spot, yes. Deaf spot, not so much. Hehehehe." Gobber chuckled sinisterly from the intercom. Pissing every cadet on the arena even further.

Dogsbreath roared and jumped towards the Nadder. He managed to catch one of its leg, startling it for a while.

"Oh and I almost forgot, Nadder are armed to toe… and I mean that quite literally."

The Nadder's toes, which are formed of exhaust vents suddenly lit up eerily blue. Dogsbreath tilted his head dumbly. "HRNG?" And a hot burning beam blade suddenly burst out from the said toe and rip Dogsbreath' lower half out. Dogsbreath gave the Nadder a moment's pause though, and Camicazy use the chance to blink close to Nadder. But the Blue Dragon was smart enough and swing around, hard. It tossed Dogsbreath at the just reappeared Camicazy. The Nerazim swiftly dodged the incoming makeshift projectile and swing her sword, cutting a bit of Nadder's wing boosters, but caused a malfunction nonetheless. The Nadder became furious and swing its leg and smack the Protoss right on her waist. The force sent her crashing through several trees.

Astrid and Snotlout ran across the artificial forest, but Hiccup was still asking questions to Gobber. "Hey, so, how would one sneak up on a Night Fury?"

"No one's ever met one and lived to tell the tale. NOW get in there!" The last sentence was carried out with an annoyed tone.

"I know, I know, but hypothetically..."

"Hiccup!"

Hiccup turned and saw Astrid and Snotlout hiding just beyond the corner. The Nadder has been forced to land and now it's scanning its surrounding. "Get down." Astrid glared at Hiccup, and motioned the boy to remain kneel down and stay quiet. Astrid and Snotlout decided to roll around. Hiccup decided to follow, but mid roll, he dropped a heat sink. The Nadder perked up and turned around, and saw the nervous Hiccup. The Dragon roared and chased after the boy.

Hiccup ran and the Nadder followed, as it did, being not too maneuverable on the ground, it smashed through trees and stuff. Furious, it unleashed its entire payload of arsenals: missiles, ion beams, Gatling guns, the lot, destroying its surroundings, leaving no place to hide, revealing everyone's position.

Astrid growled and aimed her Claymore Shotgun at the Nadder's eyes, but Snotlout, with his Missile Launcher, knock her off. "Watch out, girl. I'll take care of this." He fired the missile. But the Nadder just tilted its head and casually let the missiles pass between its spines.

"Errh… The sun was in my eyes, Astrid." Snotlout start spouting excuses for his failure while Astrid groaned in annoyance and start ran off as the Nadder chased after them. "What do you want me to do, block out the sun? I could do that but I don't have time!"

As they did, the Nadder just furiously unleash its payload time and again, making a ruin out of the landscape. Through it all, Hiccup was miraculously left unscathed through the hailstorm of bullets and missiles and laser blasts while the boy continuously asked questions about Night Fury to Gobber. "They probably... ...take the daytime off, for maintenance or cooldown right? Like a sleep mode or something."

Gobber slapped his face not sure what to say. As an instructor, he's pleased to say his students are faring better than they did a week ago, when dealing with the Gronckle. On a personal level however, this training also turns out to be a personal disaster. Oh, won't Stoick be pleased to know his son only have unbelievable luck to survive disaster as a redeeming feature?

Astrid resort to climbing and jumping from tree to tree as the Nadder took the ground with its blitzkrieg of weapons. She made one long jump when she realized that Hiccup was right in front of her. "Hiccup!" She screamed.

Astrid's scream brought Hiccup's attention but he was too late to move away as Astrid landed on him. A weird 'boing' sound was made when Hiccup's face was buried in the girl's ample breasts. The two blushed furiously.

"Ooh, Love on the battlefield." Tuffnut commented.

"She could do better." Ruffnut followed.

Slightly embarrassed, Astrid get back up and took her Claymore. The Nadder growled and was charging its ion cannon when Astrid charged in. The Nadder retaliates by firing a couple of rounds, but they missed as Astrid slid down and passed in-between its legs and fired the Shotgun several times, obliterating the Nadder's lower hull. The Nadder roared before falling down, disabled.

Gobber sighed and pressed the bell marking the end of this week's training. "Well done, Astrid. That's all for today. See you all tonight for some BBQ."

Astrid caught her breath trying to calm herself from the rush of adrenaline. But more importantly she was pissed at a certain red head. She stomped her way to the downed boy and shoved her shotgun down his throat in a menacing manner. "Is this some kind of a joke to you?"

Hiccup looked at her, his eyes filled with fear and… was that uncertainty? Astrid couldn't care less if this guys start having second thoughts about his chosen path, but his lack of… everything… is now becoming detriments to everyone, especially to her. "Our predecessor's war is about to become ours. Figure out which side you're on!"

There. That should get him something to think about. Astrid groaned and left the bewildered boy on the dust.

* * *

Astrid was right about one thing, she did give Hiccup something to think about. The boy walked back into his locker and found his visor. He opened it and saw the damaged alien black warship. He looked at one of the damages he had inflicted on the Dragon's wings and something came up in his head.

A quick trip to the workshop, a brief work on a piece of contoured metal and whatever he have, a quick visit to the storeroom and Hiccup was back in Gobber's junk picker and flying towards a certain Carrier.

As usual, he parked the Starfighter next to the Night Fury's crash hole. This time, he's carrying a pack of energy cells, should be enough to power 10 starfighters… though knowing the Dragon's… 'appetite', this might be but a snack.

Hiccup was looking around the Crash site, wondering if the Dragon was still up there, on the launchpad, trying to fly away. When he arrived on the surface and look around, wondering where the Dragon went. There are more burnt trails and bent marks on the said launchpad now than last week. Some even had its circuitry exposed.

"He must've kept trying to fly away…" He looked upward, wondering if the Dragon had indeed fly away at last. Hiccup was so focused on the black space, he didn't notice a familiar black frigate just appeared out of a Stealth Bubble and soundlessly floating at a very low altitude and move slowly towards him.

When Hiccup realized, a black shadow had loomed over him. He turned around and gasped as a giant black frigate was on top of him, staring at him from above. In those mechanical eyes, Hiccup saw it was more curious now than murderous.

He gulped and showed the frigate his package, the energy pack. The Dragon's looked at the pack of energy cells and, in a slight moment, Hiccup saw something akin to glee in its eyes. Was it laughing at his simplicity? The Night Fury pushed the energy cell back at Hiccup.

"…you don't need it?" Hiccup took the energy cell back. "You're not… hungry or anything?"

The Dragon jerked lightly, clearly amused at what Hiccup was trying to do. It didn't blame him. Other dragons on the fleet attacked Berk and go for their energy, it only make sense that the young organic creature used energy cell as a sign of non aggression.

The Dragon's main body suddenly changed from its rigid and sturdy state of a frigate into a more robotic looking form. Hiccup saw in awe as its frontal bridge (its head) bent flexibly downward, not showing any form of joints or anything. Similar with Geth Flexible constructs (AN: the Geth soldier's neck). Four pairs of long fins (or tendrils, whatever) can be seen jutting backwards from the back of its head. The Dragon practically sit, in front of Hiccup, staring at him. Alright, let's see how peaceful this organic creature really is.

Hiccup sighed as his peace offering was rejected. He put the energy pack back but the Dragon seems to have something else on its mind.

The Night Fury suddenly bent down and stood on all fours, startling Hiccup. The Frigate close in on him giving Hiccup a better view of its face. The frontal part of the Night Fury's upper jaw is composed of a semi transparent jet black casing while its lower jaw is slightly larger than the upper. Now that Hiccup noticed it, what he initially perceive as slitted eyebulbs were in fact holographic construct not dissimilar with omnitool, reflected on the insides of the upper casing, and he can also see some very complicated constructs and circuitry constantly pulsing within the confines of the said casing. The eyebulbs suddenly disappeared and a purple scanning light sweep past Hiccup's face.

"Wowwowo… what gives eh? Hrm?" Hiccup looked at the Dragon has projected a new set of eyes. This time, rather than dragon's eyes, it's more akin to… a pair of human eyes? Fancy that. The Dragon tried to copy his visage. Starting with his eyes, albeit with its own stylized square like cornea.

It get back up standing on two and stare down at him, its fins relaxed and one pair, the longest ones, were erect and flap left and right, like a rabbit's ears. That and with the addition of that wide square pupilled eyes, the Dragon looked like a giant black mechanical Energizer Bunny of death from Hell. Which is one way of saying the alien warship was quite cute, looking like that. A few girls might go coo-coo over this sight.

Hiccup's thought about girls suddenly went straight to the likes of Ruffnut, Camicazy and Astrid. Ruffnut would probably call something cute when she had riddled it with holes. He couldn't say much about Camicazy, and Astrid wouldn't be caught dead with bunny… not unless the Bunny got a handgun in it. With a grenade. And a garrote wire. The series of mental image sent Hiccup into a burst of giggles.

The Dragon jerked slightly, surprised with the organic lifeform's actions. In its screen display, it zoomed on Hiccup's expression. It record and replay it several times. It bent down and get closer to Hiccup. The Dragon struggled to have its massive steel jaw to form a smile. But being a frigate and all… the effort was met with little success and went downright awkwardly funny. Hiccup noticed the effort (though he wasn't aware of what the intended end result supposed to be) and chuckled. The Dragon clearly noticed the organic lifeform is laughing at its expense. It continued to struggle. During which, Hiccup couldn't help but notice that the Dragon… has no tooth.

"Toothless? Could've sworn you have…" As if responding to the off-hand remark, the Dragon's teeth suddenly fold out and the Dragon snapped its jaw tight, right in front of the boy. "Teeth." Hiccup no longer laugh. Satisfied the Organic Lifeform no longer mock it, the Dragon continue to try. It finally resolves to another holographic projection on its visor. A smile.

Hiccup paused and finally realized what the Dragon was trying to do. It was trying to communicate with him and so he smiled back. "Yeah… that's how you do it. Somebody smiles at you, you smile back."

The Night Fury recorded the sight and repeats the recording in its head. It close in on Hiccup and replayed the recording on the surface of its visor. A video of Hiccup saying the word repeated before him. Both couldn't hear a thing though.

Hiccup was more impressed with the Dragon's technology and made an effort to touch its face. The Dragon jerked back, quickly revert back to its frigate form, when Hiccup, desperate of not wanting the Dragon to fly yelled. "WAIT! I… Erh… I Got something for you!"

The Dragon Frigate floats cautiously, ready to fly away at a moment's notice. Hiccup unpacked the second thing he brought that day… a piece of ship plating.

When it saw this, the Night Fury revert back to its stand by mode and looked at the plating before it. The frigate's mechanical arm extended and took the plate, scan it, and then brought its wing to the front. Indeed, there's a sizable chunk of its plating went missing and truth be told, it's quite annoying to try to fly with your wings in tatters. The Night Fury compares the plating and the damage on its wings. Hiccup's armor plating's shape and size match the missing chunk perfectly. It gently place the plating on top of the exposed plating.

Hiccup smiled widely when he saw how the plating he made matched perfectly. The Night Fury hummed for a moment, and a few streams of energy pulse flow towards the said plating. But it stopped upon edges of the said plating. The Night Fury growled in annoyance. Hiccup couldn't hear its voice, but he knew when the Dragon took out the plating that something was wrong.

"Errhh… did I made a mistake somewhere?"

The Night Fury looked at Hiccup and it saw the sincerity in the organic lifeform's eyes. Funny. The human child is the one who shoot it down… so why help it now… but he seem quite capable of making something like this… maybe…

The Night Fury took the plating and swished its head, apparently motioning the boy to follow it and hop on its back. Hiccup frowned. "Don't you have any pilot seat?"

The Night Fury shrugged and it reverted back to its frigate mode and float away. Hiccup gulped and jumped away, catching its tail before it gone too far, hang on to it for his dear life as the Night Fury fly around – thankfully not so fast. But at the same time, Hiccup got a chance to get an up close scanning on the broken set of wings with his visor.

The Frigate fly to the lower are of the massive human dreadnought and landed on what Hiccup saw as the Hangar area. It landed next to an old derelict frigate. Hiccup fell on all fours, wondering what's all this about.

He looked around the hangar and saw cranes, huge welders, and other tools you would find in a carrier to maintain and even build a starship. That and some half assembled warships and parts. Most of them are still intact. Just… out of power.

The Night Fury suddenly began trembling. Hiccup turned around and gulped when he saw the Dragon Frigate begin to crack. 'Oh lord… what's happening?'

And then, just like that, the Frigate's plating suddenly break apart with a snap and float around the frigate. Hiccup instinctively cover his head, but regained his composure immediately and realized the pieces of the ship's plating is floating around. Underneath the said plating are new armor plating, newer and less dented, except the fact the other exposed and damaged parts are not replaced with new ones. A sign just how bad the damage was. Hiccup suddenly realized.

Dragons in the myth are lizards. Scientifically speaking, lizards shed their skin from time to time. If these 'dragons' are in more ways than one conform to their namesake…

Hiccup was completely bewildered. All his life he had never encountered a synthetic alien race as weird as this. A robot that periodically shed its outer armor plating like lizards? He looked at all that shed plating and for the first time in his highly analytical life, Hiccup was lost. "What do you want me to do with those?"

The Night Fury proceeded to pick one of its shed plating and place it next to Hiccup's plating. It pointed at its skin, and then to Hiccup's plating, and fro.

The teen Engineer nearly slapped himself silly for not catching it up a little quicker. The Dragon wanted him to remake the plating, using pieces of its shed skin as the base material. "You want me… to remade the patch plating… using your shed plating err… skin?"

The Night Fury nodded.

Hiccup looked back at ample of shed Dragon plating floating around them. This is like Rhinoplasty (AKA Plastic Surgery). Using pieces from another limb's skin to mend other parts. He looked around and was grateful they fell on a mostly intact carrier dreadnought. There's enough equipment here that he can operate to and build an entire frigate as well as fixing one. There's only one problem:

"Well… I can help you… and I really want to help you. But… I'm gonna need some electricity to start things up in this ship… and… well… some of your pals had sucked this ship dry. So I need to find another energy source to jumpstart at least the solar panels. So I…"

The Dragon didn't let him finish, its claw then tore the floor and a smaller, more delicate arm extend down from its main arm into the hole and pull out an electric cable.

"Wowwow… wait a sec. I know you're in a hurry to fly again, but the energy required to power a ship this big is-"

Again, the Night Fury didn't seem to listen. Instead, the manipulator arm cut the cable with its built in laser cutter, and then just like that, connected with the exposed wiring of the said cable. Electricity begin to flow ceaselessly and the second set of wing of the said Dragon frigate hum like crazy as electricity jumped in and out at a rapid rate.

Hiccup gulped. This Alien warship was that desperate to fly. What do you expect, you idiot? You shot him down! A starship is designed to fly! What kind of starship can't fly?

But a frigate? Powering an entire Dreadnought?

"But you'll… you'll kill yourself at this rate…" Hiccup moaned, worry evident.

But then, the human was worried for nothing. All the sudden, computers begin lit up all across the derelict space ship. Generators begin to hum and thrums with power. Hiccup gaped as every piece of machinery on that ship comes alive.

"_Good Morning, this VI MARSH. Welcome to SSV Equator. Scanning hull integrity. Alert, multiple Class-A hull breaches detected in area with life signs. Auto repair system, active. Priority: hangar area."_

Even the VI is back online! How much energy that Black Dragon Frigate have? Meanwhile, the VI began initiating the autorepair system. Several hull breaches were closed. Soon, every holes leading into the hangar are closed, and Hiccup's environmental indicator show oxygen had just flown in.

Not disturbed in the least by the massive power absorption on its part, the Night Fury growled. Hiccup understood and activated his omnitool and speaks through the speaker. "MARSH! Activate the solar panels!"

"_Voice Recognition, confirmed: Ensign John "Hiccup" Horrendous Haddock, III. Solar panels can only generate enough electricity to power 20% of the carrier's feature. Given the current situation, it will not be enough to activate most of the Ship's feature. Would you like to proceed?"  
_

"Reroute all energy to this section of the ship only! This is the only section I need anyway."

"_Understood, rerouting."_

And with that, the derelict carrier went back to live, if only partially, and arrays of solar panels bloomed on the ship's surface. Parts of the ship shutdown while only the hangar area is lit.

The Night Fury stay connected to the power grid for a while before it finally let go of the cable. The Hangar area is now fully active and lit.

Hiccup chuckled. "Well… I gotta hand it to you. Size of a frigate, power of a dreadnought indeed." Hiccup took off his helmet and looked at the Dragon, face to face at last.

The Dragon Frigate turned to face him as well, scanning his face in its entirety, not deterred by the visor of his oxygen helmet.

"Nice to meet you." The Night Fury heard of Hiccup's voice for the first time. It growled and Hiccup also heard the Dragon's growl for the first time as well. They've exchanged greetings.

"Well… now we're done with the pleasantries… let's get to work." Hiccup grabbed a huge chunk the shed Dragon plate and had just lifted it one handed (in Zero G) when the VI sounded:

"_Activating artificial gravity."_

And everything went back to 1 G and Hiccup nearly got crushed by the ridiculously heavy plating, which sank as it fell to the steel floor. The other shed platings that were just floating around until a moment ago also fell down like rain, some even fell on the black frigate. Not that it gave the Dragon even a scratch.

"OI! VI! ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL ME!" Hiccup roared angrily.

"_N-n-no sir. But a-a-artificial gravity activation is p-p-part of the ship's s-s-standard procedure."_

Great. The VI was so busted, it was buggy and stuttering. Hiccup sighed and then looked at the dragon shed skin. He grabbed the plate and groaned as he could no longer lift it. It must've been very dense and weigh around a few metric tons! He looked around and groaned. There's no power suit in sight (not that he could use them even if there's one around) and the crane is not gonna cut it. But normally in the workshop, the minerals he need were already been melted down or at least in bite size that humans can carry.

The Night Fury looked amusingly as the human tried several times to lift a piece of its skin. It felt it too when suddenly it felt its entire weight coming back at it. The human carrier's primitive artificial mind must've activated an artificial gravity. Funny, it was so much less than Berk's. It watched as the human struggled to lift the piece of its shed skin. Deciding it's gone too long, the Alien Warship decided to give the human… this… 'Hiccup' a little more help.

It extend its manipulator arm once more towards the shed plating. Hiccup watched. What does the dragon up to now?

Hiccup watched as the manipulator arm sent a surge of electricity to the plate. The Night Fury motion Hiccup to try it again. Hiccup blinked, wondering what's all this about and grab hold of the plate and ready to lift it with both arms with all the strength he could muster. Hiccup gaped at what happened next. He lifted the entire plate… and its weight is practically inexistent. To emphasize this, Hiccup removed his one arm and lifted the plate with just his index and thumb.

Hiccup's engineering mind quickly go through an entire catalogue of every known element, every permutation in the universe which had this unique property. And then it hit him like a brick: "…you're… plated… in an Element Zero composite armor?"

In laymen term: the Night Fury's outer armor is composed… of the most expensive and the rarest, most sought after element in the galaxy… and it's been shedding abundant amounts of them like scab for God knows how long!

…Sweet Holy Mary Mother of Jesus and Mercy…

The realization made Hiccup drop the plate, much to the Dragon Frigate's chagrin.

Hiccup regained his bearings soon after however and realized this is no time to be overwhelmed. "Alright. Alright! I get the message. Let's get to work."

And in the many, many busy hours that ensued afterwards, Hiccup realized then that fixing Night fury's platings isn't a simple matter. Oh no. It's clear that it's much complex than that, and he didn't know what that is. It doesn't help with the fact that his first attempt resulted in the Night Fury violently respond with a plasma bolt that barely missed him. He didn't blame it. He did try to forcibly meld burning hot plating into an exposed circuit by mistake. Chalking it up to a wrong composition of the plating, Hiccup simply re-melted the faulty plating and redo the process allover again.

After dozens of attempts, Hiccup was still trying to figure out what's wrong, but his body gave up first and he fell on his knees. And yet, the teen still trying to get back to his computer and insistent on trying to redo his calculation.

The Night Fury watched all this quietly. If only there's a way for the Frigate to communicate with the human kit in a more vocal manner. It can tell him that he had been wrong from step one. Fixing its shredded plating isn't a simple matter of melt it down, cast it into shape and then welded them to its skin. Oh heck no. It is much more complicated than that. The question is, how should it communicate this fact to Hiccup? But, as it scanned Hiccup's vital sign, it was surprised to see how much its vitals had deteriorated. What compels this human to do this? No. The boy cannot die now. Not yet. Not like this. He must survive.

With that conclusion, the Night Fury extended its manipulator arm and bar Hiccup's path to the computer.

"What?" The Night Fury shook its head. "Don't worry. I'll get it right. I know it hurts, but bear with it will you?"

The Night fury shook its head and pointed on the floor. The manipulator arm move back and forth between the floor and Hiccup. The Night fury even landed and docked down. It folded its large wings in a forward sweep, encasing the upper half of its frame. Hiccup caught the meaning.

"I can't rest now."

The Night Fury open up its wings backward and growled menacingly, stomping its arm as a warning.

Hiccup jerked back and finally realized, the Night Fury was right. He was frail in the first place and it won't do much good thinking when he was half alive. "Alright. You win. I'll rest." Finding a comfortable debris Hiccup sat down. Just as the Night Fury had suspected, a snore can be heard within a few seconds the boy lay down. The Night Fury also fold its wings forward again, and just like that, entered a stasis mode (sleep mode).

Hours later…

The Night fury went online again and scanned its surrounding. Its audio sensors caught the sound of furious button pressing. It looked around and saw Hiccup, sitting in front of the computer, typing.

Why, the organic creature sure is dedicated. It zoomed on the screen and found… human numeric? What is he up to this time?

The sound of the Alien Frigate activating did not escape Hiccup's ears. But he was too interested in what he's doing right now than to turn around.

It wasn't until when he finally finished what he's doing did Hiccup dared to show his awareness and turn around to show the synthetic audience his handiwork.

"Still confused over your plating composition… so… kinda… took a bit of a time for refreshing. Sorry."

The Night Fury looked at the computer screen. A series of 0s and 1s. A code. Human encryption codes. A primitive one, it seems. Frigate scanned the numbers from left to right, and at the end of the right, there's a letter. Apparently, the series of numbers represent the encryption code for that particular human alphabet.

The Night Fury read the letters from top to bottom. It formed a word. A name:

Toothless.

It remembered the boy called it that. Ergo, it was the Night Fury's name. Its callsign designated by the boy. Suddenly, a spark of an idea emanates from the depths of its system.

And then, to Hiccup's great bewilderment, the Fury's manipulator arm extend and touched/connected with the computer. And suddenly, the computer began humming at an alarming rate and when it's over, the Computer crashed, showing a series of thousands of numbers.

"Oi! You crashed the computer! Great! Now I have to reboot!" Hiccup's arm went to the reset button, but the Fury's manipulator arm slap it hard.

"W…What?" Hiccup turned around and saw the Frigate eying on him, pointing at its handwork on the screen. Hiccup looked at the screen and finally realized it was a code. An encryption… which the Fury asked him to decrypt.

"You want me to decrypt this don't you?"

The Dragon nodded.

Hiccup looked at the thousands of numbers filling the screen. It's just like that encryption of his EMP missile lock system. Only that it's several times more complex.

"You sure you don't want me to concentrate on fixing you up?"

The Dragon growled in assurance.

"Alright then. I'm not getting anywhere with your plating anyway…" Seeing no other alternative, Hiccup began to decipher it. Minutes after minutes passed, and before he knew it, Hiccup's table was already filled with sheets of papers filled with mathematic calculations. Leaving the math wiz on his own, the Alien Warship secretly picked one of the calculation sheet and scan it. Studying it and print something on it.

After a while, Hiccup became more and more confident with his work. That's the fun part about math in his opinion. You get puzzled at first, but once you cracked it, everything begin to make sense. The numbers that Toothless made is an encryption written in another different encryption. He slowly translate it, number by number, every line follows a different function. Eventually, he came up with a set of binary codes, forming 6 letters. The boy blinked as he recognized the word… the name those letters formed:

Hiccup.

His name. When Hiccup gets back on his feet, he felt something on his back and quickly turned around. The Night fury was staring at him with that calm square like digital eyes. It seems quite pleased that it finally managed to communicate properly with him.

Hiccup was awed. The boy stretched out his hand, trying to touch at least its underbelly.

The Night fury jerked back for a moment, startling the boy. Hiccup thought for a moment, and finally he decided to close his eyes, avoid eye contact… and outstretched his hand, waiting for whatever's coming to him.

The Night Fury close in on the boy's outstretched arm… and finally touched the hand gently with its snout.

Hiccup's eyes widened at the sensation of touching the living warship.

It's not cold or silent. It's warm… and pulsing with life.

This thing is alive. These Dragons… they're not just a fleet of AI warships… They're… they're ALIVE. In more ways than one.

Too bad their moment of first contact was disturbed by a sudden incoming call from Hiccup's comline.

"_Hiccup! Where are you?" _Gobber's voice sounded from the com.

"Gobber?"

"_Searched allover the bunk and the starport guard said you took my freighter. Where are you?"_

"I'm… I'm just flying it around… ya know… let off some steam."

"_Don't feel too bad about what happened today. (Sigh) Look, we're gathering up for some BBQ. You coming?"_

"Go ahead and start without me, I'll come back as soon as I can."

"_Alright."_

Hiccup looked at the Frigate before him. "I have to go back. But I promise you I'll return here."

The Night Fury understood. It handed the piece of paper it took earlier to Hiccup before it back away and docked with the other Starship and fold its wing forward, powering down.

Hiccup looked at the paper the frigate returned to him and noticed a few more codes. Similar with the one he decrypted earlier. He looked around and finally took a small piece of the Frigate's shed plating along with all his calculation papers and went back to the Freighter. Before he left, he turned one last time to the now dormant Alien starship.

"…see you again soon… Toothless."

* * *

When Hiccup arrived to the Maw indoor garden, everyone had already gathered around the makeshift bonfire.

"Ah! Hiccup, so glad you can join at last. Sit down there… now… where was I? Oh yes. The Dragon blasted my shotgun away and I retaliate by punching him. But he just bite them down and swallow it whole. And then I get a good look on its face: This Krogan's pretty delicious! It must've passed the word because it wasn't a month before another one took my leg." Gobber was telling stories about his past bouts with the Dragons.

"Isn't it weird to think your hand was inside a dragon? Like if your mind was still in control of it, you could have destroyed the dragon from inside by crushing his circuitry or something." Fishleg went on with his nerdy talk.

"I swear, I'm so angry. I'll avenge your beautiful hand and your beautiful foot. I'll chop off the legs of every dragon I fight, with my face." Snotlout rant around with his bravado.

Gobber appreciate the sentiment but that's not what fighting a dragon is all about. "No, no. Remember, it's a battleship. Cutting its leg means nothing. It's the wings and its propulsion system you really want. If it can't fly, it can't get away. A downed dragon is a dead dragon."

At that point Hiccup can only think of Toothless. Toothless clearly coinstitue as a downed Dragon. And whatever damage he had inflicted upon him had made him one. But… what exactly he's supposed to do? Then he remembered the encryption Toothless showed him. How they exchanged words with those encodings. Could it be…

Gobber yawned. It's getting pretty late. "All right, I'm off to bed. You should be, too. Next week we get to the big boys, and you all know what that means? That's right, you'll start learn how to use your Power Suit. Slowly but surely we're making our way up to the Monstrous Nightmare. But who'll win the honor of killing it and become the new Squad Leader?"

Everyone was excited when they heard it, everyone except Hiccup.

"It's gonna be me. It's my destiny. See?" Tuffnut showed a mark on his enviro suit.

Fishleg gaped in awe. "Your mom let you get a tattoo on your suit?"

"It's not a tattoo, it's a birthmark."

"You can't have birthmark on your enviro suit you idiot." Tuffnut followed.

"Yes, I can. You've just never tried because you're too scared aren't you?"

"You think I'm scared?"

"Yes you are. Scared of your own ugly face!"

"Ugly? We're twins you stupid genius!"

And the two went into their daily dose of sibling brawl. Ignoring the bickering duo, Hiccup decided to leave. But before that, there's something he need to ask. "Gobber?"

"Yes Hiccup?"

"…when the Dragon passed the word about how delicious you are… how did they do it?"

"What?"

"How did the Dragon's communicate with one another?"

"Why… they're hive minded. They're… synthetic warships… they're using Electromagnetic signals in encrypted channel."

"Have we ever tried to intercept those signals?"

Gobber was truly confused on where this conversation going. "Well… yes. Of course we tried. But all we get is gibberish. We just can't decrypt their signals."

"Do you have a copy of that signal?"

"Well, we just can't understand what they say or care-"

"Do YOU. HAVE. A copy?" Hiccup repeated a tad louder with pressure.

Gobber went completely silent at the tone. He sometimes forgot that Hiccup is Stoick's son. Some part of the Father is bound to get imprinted on the son, at least. "It's in my workshop, on the Ghost Drive."

"…thanks."

Hiccup left without another word. Astrid, in particular, was somewhat taken back. She never saw that side of Hiccup. The Stubbornness issue that all Marauder seem to possess apparently passed on to Hiccup as well. 'Well… maybe what I said in the ring did give him something to think about." And with that, she resumed her meal.

Meanwhile, Hiccup went straight to the workshop and opened Gobber's computer. He searched for the Ghost Drive and for the copy of the Dragon communication signal. The screen soon show a depiction of wavelength in chaotic amplitude and changing colors.

"…okay… let's see if this works." Soon Hiccup began tinkering with the computer, creating a program, and a function. "Converting electromagnetic wavelength variants into numbers… and… print."

The Printer let out sheets of papers filled with nothing but numbers. Hiccup scanned the numbers and caught several familiar encryption. His heart skipped a beat when a realization hit him.

"Could it be?"

The light in Gobber's workshop was on all night.

* * *

The next morning, Gobber gaped at the abundant amount of paper overflowing on the workshop. Sitting on top of the pile of papers was, sleeping Hiccup with the worst case of eyebags he had ever seen.

"Hiccup? HICCUP!"

"Zzz… Zz-WHA!" The teen jerked up from his slumber. "What?"

"Were you here all night?"

"I… What time is it?"

"8 o'clock. Morning."

"I overslept…? I OVERSLEPT!"

"Relax… no attack last night… seems your dad gave the Dragons so much beating, I don't think there's gonna be another raid for some time."

"Ye…Yeah… Okay." Hiccup looked around and remembered what he was working on yesterday. He gathered himself up. "Sorry about the mess Gobber… I was…"

"Well… it's okay. What are you working at?"

"A… Project."

"Hiccup. I hope this-"

"It's NOT what you think. It's safe. For everyone. I think." Hiccup smiled. Oh… won't the Krogan be surprised if he find out what he did.

"Okay… if you say so… Anyway… just here to wake you up and remind to mind the station." Gobber thought for a moment and finished with: "And for the Love of my Ancestor, clean this place up."

"Understood. Don't worry… I got what I need." Hiccup took one piece of the most important paper out of all the pile of papers he made last night. "I'll clean up the rest… and Gobber… I may be a little busy… for a while."

"You're not doing anything dangerous… are you?"

"Who me?" Hiccup took a moment and realized that was a wrong response. They both know Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the 3rd is synonymous with danger. "…well… it's not that dangerous. I'll survive. From my lips to God's ears."

"Okay…"

And Gobber left while Hiccup remained on the workshop, cleaning up all the papers. As he looked at each paper, he still couldn't believe that he had done it.

_That Krogan taste nasty. Don't bite him._

_BLaaargh! I bite his leg._

_Be careful with the red haired one. He's a bag of pain, that one._

_The big one or the little one?_

_The big one! What do you expect!_

Hiccup chuckled. Oh… how many scientists in Berk would be tearing their hair off over this?

Many had tried to do what he had done with highly sophisticated quantum scanners, super computers, satellite hackers…

He did it with just old school paper and pen.

He, John Hiccup Horrendous III, is the first human who had decrypted and translated the Dragonese Encryption.

* * *

Dragon Codex:

Deadly Nadder:

Frigate Class

The Nadder is the most well balanced and versatile of all dragon warships, thus making it the powerhouse of the Dragon Fleet. It is composed of three separate sections, each with its own set of weapons. The front section, which is its head contain its primary armament (aka its dragon breath) which is a variable output Ion Cannon. Nadder can charge its ion cannon through several levels of power and alter the strength of its ion cannon as needed: ranging from an anti personnel laser cutter (the weakest) to an anti fortress positron stream. Mid section contains its wings, which is armed with a pair of six barrel pulse Gatling gun. This is mainly used to deal with anything: from air to ground targets. The rear section contains two sets of weapons: its rear legs which double as boosters and Anti heavy beam cannon battery for dealing with armored ground targets, and its tail, with each scales on it are interchangeable-warhead smart missile launchers for ground bombardment and, most often, as anti air countermeasures. The Nadder's design is made mostly for urban combat. Its scaled plating, when not on fight or hiding, is usually somewhere between rainbow blue to green, but it can change its coloration to match surroundings. Though rarely seen, it is confirmed that Nadders can also dive down and submerge in water, acting as submarines. It is the best naval unit in the fleet with underwater speed rumored to equal that of a Night Fury in flight mode.

Armament: Nadders' flight is supported by a series of boosters situated in its wings and legs. Nadders only have average top speed but it can achieve that speed in record time, and it can decelerate at an instant. No Dragon has Nadder's maneuverability (except Night Fury). In battle, a poor ground walker by nature, coupled with its handicapped vision, it usually prefers to hover around on top of the battlefield at low altitude, positioning itself on a spot where it can use all its weaponry with impunity and most often would mainly use its Gatling Gun in conjunction with other secondary weaponries depending on the target (beam cannon for ground targets, missiles for air target or target in range) during the cooldown period of its Dragonbreath.

Oh Yeah! Factor: Nadder's field of vision is severely limited because each of its eyes is situated on opposite sides of its wide head. One eye can only see one side of its head, this unable it to see anything that stood directly in front of its snout. It has very keen sonar sensors though, so don't sneeze! And on a side note: Nadders display textbook narcissism.

Oh Shit! Factor: Versatile and can handle just about anything. Expect reasonable firepower no matter how you attacked it.

Threat Level: A

Shoot on sight. Some stealth and discretion needed.

Gargantuan Swarmer:

Carrier Class

At first glance, the Swarmer appears to be a gigantic dragon, dwarfing even Gronckles. But if one were to look carefully, one would quickly notice that the Swarmer's main body is that of a cruiser, slightly smaller than the Gronckle, but that relatively small body is supported by a pair of ridiculously oversized wings (each size about three times bigger than its own body). The Wing however, is the Swarmer's main feature: it house an entire fleet of drones used for a variety of purposes. The most often being as an offensive method, in which the drones work as razor sharp projectiles that overwhelm and completely cut all opposition down to size (Hence it was categorized as Carriers). The Dragon itself has no other self defense weapon and virtually helpless without its shuriken drone fleet. But the Swarmer also demonstrates another form of Dragon's technological prowess: it is also, literally, a mobile mass relay station and beacon. This feature requires at least two swarmers to be working in tandem: one act as the gate of entry, the other act as the beacon for exit. Weirdly enough, the dragon itself cannot engage in FTL travel and float around very slowly. The Night Fury remains the only known dragon capable of engaging FTL travel at will (and without the need of gateways).

Armament: an indeterminate number of small drones used mostly to slice and dice things. A very passive dragon which rarely attack directly, preferring to call in hordes and hordes of reinforcements with its role as a mobile mass relay.

Oh yeah! Factor: Has no weapon other than its drones. And its main body is also relatively weak, though heavily shielded.

Oh Shit! Factor: Able to call in an army with a blink of an eye.

Threat level: S

Never engage without an army on your back.

**Codex Updated:**

**Element Zero**

(Atomic Number 0, Chemical Symbol Ez), also known as 'eezo', is a substance that, when subjected to an electrical current, releases dark energy which can be manipulated into a mass effect field, raising or lowering the mass of all objects within that field. A positive current increases mass, a negative current decreases it. This 'mass effect' is used in countless ways, from generating artificial gravity to manufacturing high-strength construction materials. It is most prominently used to enable faster-than-light space travel. When humans discovered the Prothean ruins on Mars, they also discovered refined element zero that the Protheans had left behind. It enabled research into FTL ship drives before the Charon Relay was discovered. Eezo is generated when solid matter, such as a planet, is affected by the energy of a star going supernova. The material is common in the asteroid debris that orbits neutron stars and pulsars. These are dangerous places to mine, requiring extensive use of robotics, telepresence, and shielding to survive the intense radiation from the dead star. Only a few major corporations can afford the set-up costs required to work these primary sources. For this very reason, Eezo remains a very rare mineral even today and have a very high price tag per kilo (which continuously increasing).

Hiccup's Journal Rec. 2:

This… is a very interesting encounter for today. The Night Fury… Toothless… is smart. And I mean smart I mean he's… intelligent. I'm not talking Monkey See monkey Do kinda thing. He's intelligent enough to use whatever resources he have. Like his choice to remain in the derelict Carrier. His actions implied that he was aware of the ship's role and capability to support and repair other starship.

He was even smart enough to hotwire our system, which, I think, he would consider to be grossly primitive. And to think his entire outer casing was made by an Eezo composite… that is one rich dragon. Scanned the tail fin earlier. And based from the glimpse of what I've seen… that tail fin is some sort of… Processor. It absorb abundant amount of data and then process them somehow and transfer it back… somewhere. Haven't got enough to work with.

Finally we figure out a way to communicate with each other. We just need to streamline it. He did give me some encryptions on the paper. Translating it later.

Who knows. I may got hand of something very interesting. _End of recording._

And that's it, for now. R&R, ladies and gentlemen. R&R. Hate it, like it, despise it, flame it. Let me know what you think.


End file.
